OBX
by PADavis
Summary: Dean and Sam find something unexpected in coastal North Carolina. Barbeque, thunderstorms, and disabilities. Set Season 3. Hurt!Dean. Rated T for salty language.
1. You’ve eaten at least one whole pig

Disclaimer: No part of anything Supernatural belongs to me.

As some of you know, this was written, in part, to fulfill a request from Thru Terry's Eyes. I understand that Gaelic Spirit's new story, Hear No Evil, may have been the inspiration for her request for 'special' Dean Stories. That gives Gaelic's story more than just the potential for overlap with mine, it more than likely has at least one plot similarity. Because of that, I have refrained, at great personal expense and suffering, from reading more than the first two paragraphs of Hear No Evil. That said, when you review and tell me how much better Gaelic's story is than mine – as if that was ever in question – please be sure that I didn't copy any part of her story knowingly.

A/N: This is set between Long-Distance Call and Time Is On My Side

A/N 2: My thanks to Merisha and Scotia as always for the beta and listening to me rant about the wait for the start of Season 4. Thank goodness, I had my little Impala from the Season 3 DVD set to tide me over the last few weeks.

* * *

He sat upright with a gasp, heart racing, breath heaving. Freaking nightmares. He couldn't remember much, he never could, but the feeling of fear and helplessness always followed him when woke up, leaking into the hotel room with him like the stench of a too fresh corpse being burned.

All he could remember, all he ever could remember was a kaleidoscopic replay of scenes - horrific images of Dad dying, Sam dying, Sam dead and _cold … _the red eyes and cold kiss of the demon, his own eyes pitch black. The Deal Dream, again.

For a moment, lying there, for just a moment, he knew, he knew that's all it was, a dream, it wasn't real. Sam never died and he wasn't going to hell. The relief was palpable, like he should see it falling off him like lead weights. He could hear Sam's regular breathing from the next bed. Everything was OK – it was just a dream. He fell back on the pillows, the tension left his shoulders and he felt like he was going to melt into the mattress. He threw his right arm over his eyes, groaning in relief.

Then it all came back, like a giant hand pressing him into the bed, forcing the breath out of his lungs. The fear and regret and sorrow were back, slicing him into ribbons again, flaying him alive _again_, and like too many other goddamn nights and mornings, the realization that it was real, done, and he's going to die, had him bolting for the bathroom, falling on his knees by the toilet and puking until he dry heaved.

He sat back against the tub, waiting for his breathing to change from labored gulps to something quieter. When he could, he stood, and began moving around the bathroom, now as silent as he was noisy before. He turned on the light, and rinsed his mouth and gargled, sure he could still feel vomit in the back of his throat. He realized some got in his nose and that almost set him off again.

He looked in the mirror. Sam'd better be asleep, because he looked like week old road kill. He washed his face, ran his wet hands through his hair, and toweled off hard, trying to get color back in his face. Another mirror check - still pale but better. Sam shouldn't notice anything. Dean turned off the fan and quietly opened the door.

Sam was awake, of course, just outside the door. He was sitting at the room's small table, leaning the chair back on two legs to lean against the wall. Waiting for him.

Dad always said the best defense was a good offense. "Trouble holding it, Samantha?"

Sam flipped on the table lamp. "The nightmare again?"

The flaw in his plan, of course, was that Dad also said the same thing to Sam. "Something I ate didn't agree with something I drank, that's all." He crossed to his bed and dropped onto his back, hands under his head.

"Dean, we are getting you out of this deal, you know that right?" Dean didn't want to look up. "Dean, I need you to trust me."

"Sam, I trust you…"

"I can hear the 'but'. Either you do or you don't."

"There's no 'but', Sam, I trust you. I've trusted you all my life. Hell, I even trusted you with my car. What I'm afraid of is that you'll do something that will get you killed trying to save me." He rubbed his eyes. There was no way out of the deal, and somewhere in the back of Sam's enormous brain, he must know that. "And even though you know how I _live_ for these late night emo-fests, I really want to go back to sleep."

"So, the nightmare again?"

God, Sam was like a giant dog with a Dean bone in his mouth. He must have been awake for all of it. "Just the same old, same old. Nothing new for you to worry about." Sam walked over and handed him a glass of water and a couple of pills. He cocked an eyebrow and looked up at Sam. "And these would be…?"

"Antacids. You should start taking these every day if you don't want an ulcer."

Dean figured it was probably too late on the ulcer front but if it could help ease the almost constant pain in his gut – he shrugged and swallowed them. "Go back to bed. I'm fine. I'll be asleep again before you are."

Sam snorted. "No you won't. You'll lay there for a while, then when you think I'm asleep you'll get up and surf porn", but he did turn out the table lamp and climbed slowly back in bed, not taking his eyes off his brother. Sam lay down, but raised himself up on one elbow, still staring in Dean's direction.

Dean was sure that the glare Sam was directing at him would be more effective if the light was on. "That's not the _only_ thing I do …"

Sam went on as if he hadn't spoken. "I don't mind, but if you _are_ up, why don't you surf us up a non porn job?" He rolled over, turning his back to his brother.

Dean pulled a face, and rolling his eyes, mouthed back "surf up a non porn job" in his best imitation of Sam's hoity toityness before leaning back on the headboard. He did his best, he wanted to sleep. He counted little Sams, tried counting flanges, and hummed through three exorcisms and two binding spells to five different tunes. Nothing – usually the Latin reduced him to slack-jawed boredom. He undressed a few starlets, thought about Tara, thought about Tara some more, considered returning to the bathroom for some … changed his mind, and glanced at the clock.

Three o'clock. He tried counting their weapons in his head, which was way better than counting Sams most of the time, since he would usually fall asleep tangled up in trying to decide if a dream catcher was a weapon or a tool, and if that made a difference to its being a weapon. But tonight, still awake.

At least he could quit lying there - Sam was finally asleep. The kid had been faking for a while, but all that pretend deep breathing caught up with him like it always did. There was this kind of whuffling snort he only made right as he fell asleep. He'd been doing it since he was tiny and Dean was sure Sam still didn't know. It was just one of the million things on Dean's list of things he was never going to tell Sam.

Growing up Dean needed to know, he had _had_ to know, when Sam was asleep, so he and Dad could talk about monsters and hunts, or patch each other up … that way he'd known for sure that Sam wouldn't be scared, wouldn't be hiding under the bed, maybe wouldn't remember the times their father rolled in hurt or drunk … Sam was big smiles, and millions of questions, and school, and homework, and games, and TV, not broken bones and stitches, and ugly murderous monsters. That came later, as late as Dean could make it for Sam.

He turned on the laptop and angled the screen away from Sam's bed. While he waited for the system to boot up, he snagged his Dad's phone from his duffel and plugged it into its charger. He never had changed the message on the phone. He couldn't. He'd find himself calling it every so often just to hear his Dad's voice – when he said 'call my son Dean, he can help' … it was like Dad trusted him. And how pitiful was that?

His dad was never one to hand out praise, so what little pieces he got, he held on to tight. In the years after Sam left for college and before Dad died, Dean could count on one hand the times Dad said something as simple as "You did good", and that included the time fucking Yellow Eyes said it _pretending_ to be his father.

He snorted softly – Sam never did believe that _that_ was how he had known it wasn't Dad. Dean never could quite convince his brother that their Dad really would have ripped him a new one for using that bullet. And that last conversation in the hospital, when he came to say what turned out to be his goodbye, well, that was just screwed to hell anyway. The message on the phone wasn't ambiguous. It wasn't 'I'm proud of you, now kill your brother for me if it goes belly up'. It was simply 'he can help'. Sometimes that was all he needed to stay sane.

* * *

Sam woke up slowly, stretching and yawning before he pulled himself from bed and checked on his brother. Dean was in bed, and asleep, which was a relief. As he walked past the laptop he felt it with his palm. Still warm – he looked back at his brother. Dean had probably been asleep no more than two hours. Even before Dean's nightmares, Sam had had plenty of times when he thought his brain would freeze solid with worry, but now with them …

God, it was such a relief when Dean finally admitted he wanted to live, but it was also so hard, sitting in that car, not to burst out laughing and say 'I told you so'' a thousand times. But it got him back to researching the way nothing else could have. And he was finally talking to his big brother all the time now – not the cardboard cutout with the big smile and dead-eyed game face he was so used to seeing the last year.

He got in the shower, and stretched out his shoulders and neck, leaning his arms against the tile wall. He was strung out - anxious, stressed, and frantic to find a solution to the deal - but at least he'd stopped drinking. His experiment at 'being' Dean with alcohol had been a disaster – hell, he couldn't hold three beers, and here he'd been drinking whiskey at eleven in the morning. And he hated whiskey.

But these nightmares – that was Dean being him, not the other way around. He was beginning to understand why his brother threatened to drug him to get him to sleep that year after Jess died. Dean didn't know it but on their last restocking run, while Dean was rooting through the suturing and bandaging supplies, Sam had not only picked up their usual antibiotics and painkillers, he'd also rifled through the rest of the prescription drugs and pocketed Phenobarbital and Flurazepam. He had the bottles now in his duffel, safely rolled up in his boxers, the only place Dean wouldn't look. He hoped.

His brother was mostly asleep when Sam came out of the bathroom, and only stirred enough to make sure that Sam was the one making the noise, before rolling over with a sigh. Sam left a note and grabbed the car keys on his way out the door. Dean would forgive him as long as he filled the tank and brought back several gallons of coffee. When he slipped back in, Dean was in the shower, so he took his customary spot in front of his laptop, idly picking up Dad's phone.

He tossed the charger on Dean's bed but before he tossed the phone over with it, he turned it on and let it power up. He booted up the laptop and was checking the browser history for Dean's late night hits, when the phone rang. He almost spilled his coffee. Maybe another call for Edgar Cayce.

He answered with a simple "Hello."

"John? John, you old son of a bitch. This is Ernie, Ernie Popkins in Nags Head. How are you?"

"This is Sam, John's son. What can I do for you?" He heard the bathroom door open, and Dean was by his side in a moment, still toweling off.

"Sam? Wait a minute, oh that's right, you were in college when I met John, weren't you? Can I talk to him?"

"No, he's not here …"

"Is Dean there?"

"Yeah, just a minute." He covered the mouthpiece and held the phone out to Dean, who had moved over to sit on the foot of Sam's bed. "It's someone named Ernie Popkins from Nags Head?"

Dean frowned in concentration for a second before recognition made his eyebrows go up. He grabbed the phone. "Hey, old man, this is Dean. How are you?"

Sam was treated to Dean's almost monosyllabic side of the conversation. Sometimes he wondered why Dean didn't just grunt and write in pictographs. 'Stick figure with spear' could mean hunt, a buffalo - hungry, two buffalos would be very hungry … Finally, after a litany of "yeah", "that's good", "sure", and "uh huhs", Dean looked up at Sam.

"Hang on a minute, Ernie." Like Sam, he covered the mouthpiece. "Sounds like a gig for us in North Carolina. Got something else on the fire?"

Sam shook his head.

"It'll take us about a day and a half to get there, Ernie. Let me make sure I have your number on my cell…" and the conversation dissolved into numbers, a juggled phone, and a few more grunts from his brother before he hung up. He stood and grabbed his clothes. "You can work on your tan again, Barbie" floated back to Sam before Dean closed the bathroom door behind him.

"Dean!" he yelled toward the door.

He heard a muffled "What?" before Dean stuck his head out of the door with his toothbrush in his mouth.

"Can I assume you didn't find a job on Busty Asian Beauties dot com?"

The only answer was an eye roll and a raised finger.

* * *

They were coming in to North Carolina from Illinois, Dean swinging them due south until they were past Kentucky and then east on I40 skirting Winston-Salem to the north, then looping south around the congestion of Raleigh-Durham. Sam watched the countryside turn to land so low laying he wondered why the ocean hadn't already reclaimed it. They were on NC 64 when Dean sat up a little bit and negotiated a right turn onto Route 11 south toward Greenville.

Sam raised his eyebrows at his brother, wishing once again that he could raise one eyebrow like Dean. He tried holding one down. "What's in Greensville?"

"B's."

Sam waited but Dean didn't elaborate – but then Cro Magnan man wouldn't. "And you have a hankering for honey?"

Dean quirked up one side of his mouth and cut his eyes over to Sam. "Restaurant." He scratched his chin. "Shack mostly. Good barbeque."

"All we've eaten is barbeque since yesterday – you had it for breakfast." He was exasperated. "You've eaten at least one whole pig by now. Don't we need to get to Nag's Head?"

"Best barbeque, then. And it's only 30 minutes out of the way. I ate there a couple of years ago when you were in Stanford. Had a couple of spooks to track down – turned out to be Revolutionary War leftovers. Dad and I were here almost a month trying to find the gravesites."

Sam looked at over at Dean who'd grown unusually quiet.

Dean, still quiet, "It was a good hunt," then turned a broad smile on Sam. "I ate there at least a hundred times. I would dip myself in the sauce if they'd let me. It's like pig heaven, Sam. You'll love it."

"Dean…"

"Sam, I may never be in this part of the country again, deal or no deal."

Sam winced but let his brother talk.

"Gotta admit, we don't do the coasts that much." He laughed and turned a little toward Sam. "Remember in _M.A.S.H._ when Hawkeye ordered the ribs?"

Sam shook his head. "I don't think I remember that one."

"He had them flown to Korea special. He said he kept a cut on his lip open for weeks just so the sauce could sting it? Remember that? That's the kind of food I'm talking about."

Sam resigned himself to another hour watching his brother in a Neanderthal carnivorous ecstasy – with sauce – but when they pulled up to the restaurant, he almost groaned. It really was a shack, paint peeling, a hand lettered sign, dirty windows … a dive.

"Come on, Sammy, we have to get in line. I'll hold our place while you play with your eyebrows, OK?"

Sam flipped him the bird but his brother's back was already to him. He went to open his door and almost hit the car next to them. Oh, nice. He wormed his way out of the car, and worked his way through the parking lot. It was packed, cars parked almost on top of cars, and up ahead he saw Dean getting into what appeared to be a long line. He had just tripped over some redneck's trailer hitch when the smell reached him. His mouth started to water – Pavlov was somewhere ringing a huge dinner bell.

TBC


	2. You elide the ‘n’

A/N: I've mostly recovered from watching Lazarus Rising, several times, last night. Faint squees can still be heard.

A/N 2: Thanks again to Merisha and Scotia for the beta work. Any remaining errors, if I have not said this recently, are all my fault.

* * *

It took them another three hours to reach the east coast, crossing innumerable bridges and threading in and out of small town traffic, before they reached the Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge and headed across open water to the one hundred plus mile stretch of barrier islands called the Outer Banks. Dean headed north and pulled onto State Route 12.

"They call this the Beach Road – it was the only road at all for years before 158," Dean pointed his left arm out the window to the west, "was built." He pointed again this time ahead and to the left. "I hope we can get a room a room at the Seaside."

Sam watched as they pulled into the parking lot of Seaside Cottages and Motel. Dean hopped out of the car and grinned at Sam. "I'll see if we can score one of the cottages", and pointed to one of the tiny buildings taking up most of the property. "They look like doll houses, don't they? You and your little friends can have a tea party."

Sam looked at the building in frustration and shouted after him, "Dean, I don't even know if I can get in the door!" When Dean didn't react, he added, under his breath, "Goddamn munchkin". Dean stepped out of the office a few minutes later, dangling room keys. A tiny and ancient woman was trailing after him. Sam pointed his chin in her direction. Dean spun on his heel, startling her so much she almost dropped her cane.

Dean held her elbow. "Is there a problem?"

"I just wanted to meet your adorable brother", she said, pointing at Sam. Sam felt almost as surprised as the old lady when he heard that, and saw Dean making frantic 'come here' hand flaps in his direction. He ambled over to meet them.

Dean said, "Mrs. Pelham, this is my brother Sam", as an introduction, and headed for the car as Sam bent almost double to shake her hand. He heard the car start up, and had just turned to join Dean at the car when he felt something. He spun almost as fast as Dean had, catching at Mrs. Pelham's hand. He whispered, "Did you just _pinch_ me?" She might have blushed under her make up, Sam couldn't tell, but she did smile before turning and making her way slowly back to the motel office.

He reached the car in time to pull his messenger bag from the trunk.

Dean raised his eyebrows. "So, you make a date?"

He snorted. "She wishes. Why do sweet old things always line up for a taste of me?"

"They can't resist those dimples."

Sam ducked as Dean reached over to pinch his cheek, laughing.

Dean looked thoughtful. "There was that cougar at the nautical museum … she would have shown you a very very good time. And she was rich. Your participation could have helped the Winchester Fund for Poor Hunters."

Sam grimaced. "Mrs. Pelham here is too old to be a cougar, Dean, and I'm pretty sure this place is not a gold mine. Maybe she's a sphinx?"

"Sphinx? Better than a crone, or a biddy. Maybe a blue hair …" he stopped when Sam punched his arm.

Dean looked at him resentfully for a second, then opened the door of cottage number seven. The interior was done predictably in shells, net, rope, and seascapes. It reeked of the fifties. The cottage was small but someone had managed to fit in a miniscule kitchen, too small to even be a kitchenette. Sam wondered if there was a word for that, and why they hadn't come up with one before.

Dean flipped open his phone and called Ernie. Once he finished, he turned to Sam. "We'll meet him tonight for dinner. There's this place not too far from here…"

"I'll go anywhere where the staff doesn't look like the friggin' Benders, Dean. Everyone at B's looked like extras from Deliverance."

They pulled into the restaurant parking lot at about 7:30 that night. Sam checked the sign. He read it again. "If anyone had ever told me I'd be eating at a place called 'Bob's Eat and Get the Hell Out' I would have laughed in their faces." He turned his head to look at Dean. "Dad liked this place, didn't he?"

"Sure, we both did."

There wasn't anything special about the restaurant, just formica topped metal tables, lots of metal chairs, and a row of benches along two walls. Like any place in a vacation area, the front of the place was littered with displays of branded tee shirts, drink holders, key chains … but Eat and Get The Hell Out?

He said, "Is Ernie here?" over the noise, but before Dean could answer two things happened. A white haired man back in the open kitchen yelled "Winchester!" and a middle aged man with bright blue eyes stood up from a booth, and waved, calling out "Dean, over here."

Sam was grinning by the time both men made it to them, one from around the counter and one from the far side of the restaurant, because Dean was blushing, actually blushing, at being recognized and greeted.

Dean introduced Sam to Jeff, one of the cooks, and Ernie Popkins. Jeff pumped his hand and said, looking back toward the door, "Where's the old man, Dean, still parking the car? Moving slower than the last time I saw you, I bet. Bob will want to see him."

Sam watched as Dean ducked his head a little bit. It was still hard for his brother, even after this much time. He cleared his throat, but Sam replied for him.

"I'm sorry to tell you but our Dad died a year and a half ago. Traffic accident."

Dean cut a quick look at Sam and nodded his thanks.

"Oh, Ace, I'm sorry," Ernie began, "I had no idea when I called his number."

"Of course you didn't, old man, its all right." He looked at Jeff. "He talked about this place all the time. He thought Bob was wasted here – kept talking about how he should open a national chain and insult the whole country instead of just this one little piece of it."

"He was a good man, Dean. But a national chain? Bob will never go for that – he can't fish for the whole country." He gestured toward the restaurant, "Grab one of the booths. We've got trout Bob caught this morning." He turned abruptly and headed back to the kitchen.

They settled in a corner booth and eyed the specials board before a fast moving waitress came to take their order. During the meal, Ernie talked and talked and talked, he apologized for it, but said even his wife didn't know how to turn off the spigot. He'd called John to North Carolina a couple of years ago, having relatives 'out to Greenville' who needed help. He had been a real estate agent in the Outer Banks for a long time, and launched into an exhaustive description of the rental market and the housing boom going on to the north. He looked at Dean at one point, and said, "In the high months, you can't hardly get within spitting distance of Duck what with all the eighteen wheelers, and Corolla is right out."

After finishing his surprisingly good trout, Sam watched in resigned wonder as Dean finished a mound of fried oysters that was almost as big as his head. He glanced causally around the restaurant and found his eyes drawn to the ceiling. The acoustic tiles had been covered with tee shirts, most sporting fishing and restaurant logos. There were some surfing ones mixed in, and some were autographed. Dean must have caught him looking, because he got a nudge in the ribs, and Dean pointed toward the ceiling in one corner of the restaurant.

"Be sure to check over there." He turned to Ernie and reined him in. "Why were you calling us this time, Ernie? One of your rental properties?"

Ernie settled back and looked over his shoulder. They were quite isolated, no tables nearby, and only an empty booth behind them, their closest company a large, and clearly artificial, palm tree strung with Christmas tree lights. "Well, I'll tell you…" and he did in earnest and vivid detail.

He described a series of extremely localized storms, almost hurricane strength, hitting different areas of the Banks in the last few months. One had wiped out a new housing development and golf course 'over to' Corolla, one a fishery in Avon, another went inland far enough to scrub a successful vineyard off the map. Ernie detailed several others, producing a manila folder stuffed with newspaper clippings, maps, lists of dates, locations, property, and the produce and livestock lost. Sam hadn't heard fish referred to as livestock before. Even the state-owned aquarium and botanical gardens inland had been affected.

Sam pulled out a pad and took notes – Ernie had not only brought clippings, he also knew the land owners or friends of the land owners, and was a wealth of information on witnesses, addresses, phone numbers, and the gossip almost a prerequisite in a community of this size. Ernie called them when the storms started causing fatalities.

"Why do you think this is our kind of gig, Ernie?" Dean stretched a bit, and scratched his head. "This area gets a lot of storms."

"Tell you the truth, Dean, I don't know for sure, but I'm hoping it's something you do something about. This'll kill the tourist industry, and we aren't even into high season yet. It can't be natural for these storms to be so selective, can it?"

Dean looked at Sam who shrugged. "We'll look into it and let you know."

"Staying at the Seaside again?" Ernie was grinning. Dean grunted and Sam half way expected him to draw a symbol for yes, a buffalo hoof print maybe, in the condensation on the table. Sam nodded. "Mrs. Pelham make a grab for your asses yet?" Sam felt the blush spreading to the top of his head and down his neck under his shirt.

Dean guffawed when he saw Sam's face. "Already? She went right for the white meat!"

Ernie grinned. "Don't feel bad, Sam. She got your brother and your father the last time they were here."

"Dad – she got Dad? Oh man, I wish I could have seen his face." He looked at Dean. "I'm saying Cristo the next time we see her." He stopped suddenly and frowned. "And you _wanted_ to go back there? You like getting your ass pinched by granny, dickweed?" Dean and Ernie laughed so hard they had to wipe their eyes.

On the way back to the hotel, Dean took a detour to a Brew-thru and picked up a couple of six packs at the drive in window. "You gotta love drive-through beer. They have beer everywhere here", he said, pulling back on the Beach Road. "They even have beer at the pancake houses – how awesome is that?"

Sam shook his head, and smiled, unwilling to say how awesome that was.

* * *

On the way to breakfast the next morning, Dean drove north, and Sam watched the landscape on the left of the road gradually change over from shops and small houses to sand dunes that eventually towered over the road. He could see dozens of kites in flight in the air over the dunes. As they drove around a bend in the road, Dean nudged Sam to get his attention and pointed toward the sand.

"See that? Sticking out of the sand?"

Sam bent down and looked out of Dean's window and up at the dune. "It looks like a … a minaret?" He cranked around to look at it through the rear window as they passed it.

Dean grinned. "There's a miniature golf course under there – the top of a little castle is all that's left. There's even a hotel further back in the dune. Years ago, they used to let people dig down in the sand and explore it. It would be pitch black down there. And all that sand on top of you", he felt a small shudder go up his spine, "it would be like being buried alive." He looked at Sam. "There's a housing development behind there that's next to be buried. They put up fences and shit, but they can't stop the sand. It just keeps piling up. That's gotta be creepy, don't you think? Watching it get closer and closer…"

He trailed off and Sam watched him frown briefly. He was quiet until Dean pulled into the parking lot of a pancake house. He glanced at Dean. "What, you want beer?"

Dean gave him a half smile. "No. All you can eat pancakes and maple syrup."

Their servers were young, eager to please, and all had thick accents which to Dean's untrained ear all sounded vaguely Russian. When the check was produced, Sam asked their waitress where she was from, and she answered cheerfully enough.

"Bulgaria. And she", pointing at the hostess, "Serbia", her finger continued on pointing to the other waiters, "Serbia, Georgia, and Bulgaria, but I didn't know her at home."

After she left, Sam looked at Dean, eyebrows up. "Do you think that's unusual? Everyone here is from some part of eastern Europe."

Dean rubbed his hair. "Huh. I never thought about it. There's just kids with accents in the restaurants here."

"Well, one of the victims was definitely from that area - Gornyi Khiebnikov. He was working at the fish hatchery."

"Did Ernie have an address for him?"

Sam flipped back through his notes. "Actually no, just a general area."

Dean stood, dropping a few bills on the table. "Why don't I drop you at the library? I'll go see if I can find anything out about … Gorney? … and join you there afterwards."

"I think it's more like Gornnn-yee. You elide the 'n'."

"Bite me."

When they reached the car, Dean over the top at Sam. "Oh, and Sam."

Sam waited patiently.

"Kill Devil Hills – you know, that's the area where we think the Russian kids are? That refers to smuggled rum, not a demon." He scrubbed his hand through his hair and smiled. "Dad was all over it. One of the reasons we spent so much time here after the Greenville job."

Sam said, "Smuggled rum?"

"They hid barrels underneath the hill where the Wright Brothers Monument is in Kitty Hawk. That's all it was. Still, we both spent a lot of time checking."

He got into the car, and Sam slid in after him, timing it so that the doors slammed shut together.

"You went to the Wright Brothers Monument when you were here before?"

Dean smirked. "No, we didn't, not being geeks like you. You'd probably love it. They have a life sized model of the plane. I'll take you to see it before we leave."

Sam turned his head away toward his window before he rolled his eyes. His brother was so transparent sometimes. When he had his expression under control, he looked back. "Dean, that sounds awesome. I can't wait to go with you."

The smile he got back from Dean was worth pretending the visit would be for him. Sam was sure he'd end up trailing his 'non geeky' brother around the exhibits for hours.


	3. Towering cumulonimbus clouds were rising

A/N: Thanks again to Merisha and Scotia for the beta work. Any remaining errors, if I have not said this recently, are all my fault.

* * *

Dean drove north through Kitty Hawk and into Kill Devil Hills. He pulled off the Beach Road and cruised the network of roads in the blocks between the ocean and 158. Ernie said that this area was where most of the eastern European and Russian kids boarded. Almost all the houses on the islands were up on stilts, usually six or seven feet off the ground, with a car port and storage below. In this area, the houses were older and more eccentric, some more rundown, and in some areas almost ramshackle.

He found a complex of houses whose joint backyards were blocked from view by partial fences, some plywood, even a surfboard or two. He watched and listened as kids Sam's age or a little younger moved in and out between the houses. He picked a house and began walking to it, and could feel the eyes on him, just like any hunter would. He glanced around the front of the house, noting movement in all the windows.

He climbed the steps to the front door and knocked, stepping back from the door so that all the people checking him through the peephole, five at least from the noise and whispering, could see him. After a few minutes, he knocked again, and the door opened a few inches. He smiled and approached the door.

"Hi. I'm trying to find someone who knew Gornyi Khiebnikov." He did his best imitation of Sam, and if he didn't quite radiate the sincerity that just baked off his brother, he could still raise the temperature a little bit.

"I understood he might have lived near here?" The door didn't move. "Is there someone here I could speak to?"

He smiled again and ran his hand through his hair. "I'd really appreciate a few minutes of your time." He looked down at his feet then back up at the door through his eyelashes. There were a few words spoken inside, then finally the door opened a bit wider. That move never failed … and it was a guy opening the door. Damn, he was good – it even worked on gay guys. Which was going to be another thing on his list of a million and one things he'd never ever tell Sam.

After giving him a long look, the guy said, "No one here knew this man." He started to close the door.

Dean reached for his wallet, and pulled out a ten dollar bill, and held it up between two fingers. "Are you sure?" He held the guy's eyes. He added another ten. "Just a few questions. It's not official. I'm not the police or the INS." He added a twenty. When that failed, he started to pull out a second twenty but, changing his mind, folded the bills in his hand, and took a step back towards the steps. He put his wallet back in his pocket. "No problem, I'll check another house."

The door swung open. The guy stepped forward, hand out. "Give me the money and I'll find someone who knew Gornyi."

Dean shook his head. "Like I said, not a problem. I'll check another house." He turned away, but turned back almost immediately when he heard a feminine voice. A young woman stepped out of the house, holding up her hands.

"Everyone here knew Gornyi. He lived in the house behind us." She plucked the bills from his hand, and motioned him inside.

The house itself was dark and had an overpowering smell of onions. There were mattresses pushed up all along the walls, and a few tables and chairs. He took a long look at the girl as she walked in front of him. She was almost painfully thin, and so tense her shoulders and neck were stretched taut. Her dark hair was pulled back into a messy pigtail. He figured she was nineteen or twenty, tops.

She led him through to the backyard where beach chairs and umbrellas had been set up near a charcoal grill and several coolers. There were about fifteen people in the backyard and they all shared the same look – skittish and cold eyed. They reminded him of the beach cats he'd seen slinking around – skinny, hyperaware, and suspicious - as they prowled around the edges of the yard, eyes locked on the stranger.

He looked back at the girl. "What can you tell me about Gornyi?"

"He came here for work like all of us." She offered him a beer.

Thinking of African dream root, he waved it off. "Do you work in a restaurant?"

She nodded, "Yes, the one on the Pier." She sniffed. "We are treated like cattle, mostly, by our handlers, shoved into jobs, houses. The businesses pay our handlers, who then pay us. We have group houses, like these, to save money. Most of us will go home, richer than we were, and get good jobs, knowing English well, and familiar with Americans." She opened her beer and took a long swallow. "Gornyi – he wanted to stay, like some of us. He got his own job at the fish farm, is that the word?"

He nodded. "Yeah, or fishery, but farm's as good as anything I guess."

"Fish fishery." She moved the words around in her mouth like she was tasting them. "He paid our handler his fee, and kept the rest. He was saving for a deposit on an apartment." She looked down. "The storm came. Nothing but the fish fishery was touched. Gornyi only person to die."

"Do you notice anything unusual about Gornyi before he died? Unusual behavior? Did he talk about anyone after him? Did he keep apart?"

"How can this matter? A storm is a storm."

"The storms here recently have been unusual, don't you think? Hurricane season is months away. And the Weather Service didn't predict that storm. If they had advance notice of the storm, the farm would have taken precautions. According to the article in the paper, the sky was a clear blue until just minutes before the storm hit."

She looked away, brows furrowed. "Gornyi wanted to stay here. He said so, many times. His family was unhappy with him. They were old country and very superstitious. That made him nervous, perhaps." The wind picked up suddenly, carrying the smell of the ocean but also something unidentifiable. She looked up over his shoulder and he saw her eyes widen.

He stood and spun around, hand reaching automatically for his gun, when he realized she was looking at the sky. Towering cumulonimbus clouds were rising in the east, black and almost greasy looking. He heard thunder.

The back yard exploded into activity as anything that could be carried inside was dragged away. She stood up. "You should go now. Please, go to your car." She almost stalked back through the house, Dean on her heels.

As they came on to the porch, his guide was pulled into a heated discussion with the young guy from earlier. Dean's eyes were drawn to a small table placed by the door, set with a loaf of bread, a dish of salt, a couple of other odds and ends, and an axe, balanced on its butt, blade pointing up. Trying not to unbalance it, he gently touched the axe blade with his thumb. He was surprised when it cut him. Just as he brought his thumb to his mouth to suck it, she was back.

"You must go", she pointed at the sky, "the storm is coming."

He pointed at the table. "Is this to welcome people or to keep them away?" She didn't reply, just pulled him toward the steps back to the street. As he turned toward the ocean, he got another good look at the sky. He'd forgotten how fast storms came up here. The clouds were impossibly tall, covering half the sky, visibly roiling and twisting. He could see lightening illuminating the clouds from within. He glanced behind him to see a clear cerulean blue sky.

The wind picked up, blowing sand and litter toward them. Thunder pealed and the sky opened - they were soaked through in seconds. She was practically pushing him down the steps.

"I'm going, I'm going!" He yelled over the storm. He grabbed her arm. "I'm Dean. What's your name?"

She cut her eyes frantically toward the front door and tried to tug herself away, shaking her head.

"What's your name?" He was practically screaming in her ear. She leaned in, lips to the shell of his ear, and shouted back,

"Milanka. Milanka Djordjević."

He grinned, released her arm, and dashed for the car.

* * *

The library was not great. Sam found more lore and history of the area using his laptop than the shelves, but between the high speed wifi and the newspaper archives, he could make due. A string of localized storms was not a repeating phenomenon, which allowed him to rule out a couple of suspects immediately.

Which, he thought as he rubbed his eyes, should have been more help. Like most of the east coast, this strip of land had layers upon layers of history, centuries to accumulate murders, shipwrecks, ghosts, demons, and vengeful spirits.

He started with the oldest Cherokee legends and sacred lands, moving steadily through the lore of the 17th century English settlers to those of the slaves, through pirate stories, shipwrecks, swimming accidents, hurricanes, and even plane crashes. Nothing on storms, sand storms, wind storms, or destruction of land immediately came to the surface. One name kept coming up, though, but he was consciously avoiding it. Croatoan. There was no way in hell this thing could be related to Croatoan. There was no demonic virus here, but Roanoke Island and the tree where the word was carved were less than ten miles from where he was sitting.

He was rooting through the national meteorological service records for similar weather patterns up and down the east coast when Dean squished in, leaving damp footprints behind him.

"You went swimming?"

He shook his head. "You're the beach bunny, Samantha." He pulled out a chair and sat opposite Sam, before shaking his head, hard, sending water droplets onto the table near Sam's books. He snagged them back to safety.

Dean looked hurt. "I toweled off before I came in. Big storm north of here. You can still see it if you look across the dunes." He reached for one of the books, stopped, looked at his hand, went to dry it on his jeans, and reconsidered. "Be right back." He emerged from the men's room almost twenty minutes later. He reached for the book again, but Sam got to it first. "Come on. I used the hand dryer. Even my shirt is dry." He pulled it away from his chest to demonstrate.

"And it's a sauna in the bathroom? Remind me not to go in."

Dean grinned and ran his fingers through his short hair. "I went to see the Russian kids. Talked to this chick – Milanka. She works on the Pier. They've got this kind of student hostel living arrangement. Milanka knew 'Gorrrrnnnyeee'", he said, rolling out the name. "Just eliding." He cut his eyes to Sam, and smiled again when Sam scowled. "Gornyi was part of her summer crew but decided to try to stay in the US. That's about it. Then the storm came up and they all scattered. Not Milanka though – she almost dragged me to the car."

He scratched his head, then pulled his right hand in front of his face to inspect his thumb, rubbing it against his first finger.

"Why don't you join me researching? Unless you want bruising inflicted on your ass, then go on back to the motel."

"No, I'm good." He pushed the book back and reached for the laptop. "I need a computer…?"

Sam pointed back toward the door. "Not mine. Go to the front desk."

A few hours later, the librarian pointed him to the carrels with computers. He spotted Dean, walked over, and looked at the monitor screen. "Hey." He stopped for a moment. "You're looking up the buried golf course? What happened to the storms?"

His brother looked a little sheepish. "I love that little castle." He shut down the computer and picked up his notes. "I just can't get over how the sand just swallowed it." As they walked to the car, he waved at the dune visible in the distance. "That dune is an unstoppable force – gotta like that." He was quiet for a moment, and then added, "Although drive through beer is better."

* * *

They were interviewing victim's family members the next morning. Sam took the lead, going all dewy eyed as he talked, and once, trod on Dean's foot when he tried to ask a question. Dean knew he hadn't been so good, well less good, interviewing this last year. It was just that he felt so impatient waiting for them to finally tell him what he wanted to know.

By the time they reached the fifth person, Dean's toes were practically crushed, and he was reduced to smiling and nodding as Sam questioned the widow of one of the victims. He kept one ear on the conversation as he looked out a window onto the back yard. It was a shambles. There were demarcations for plantings and some raised beds, but the plants themselves were gone. When Mrs. Cole, Coleman, Coleslaw, something C, answered Sam's latest question, he asked one of his own.

"Ma'am, I can't help notice that something happened to your backyard. There must have been a storm through here?"

"Yes, a few weeks before my husband died. The garden was my pride and joy. My neighbors and I even have a contest every year." She wiped her nose with a tissue and walked to the window. "I'm sure I'll never get it back to what it was." She pointed, "See through there? The storm got those two yards, and another three on the next street over. They found Mrs. Perkins' reflecting ball on the roof of one of the condo developments", she said, pointing in a different direction. "Over there. Unfortunately in perfect condition."

As they left the house, Sam asked Dean what his plans were for the rest of the day. He scratched his head. "Is there anyone left to interview?"

Sam checked his list and notes. "Not unless you think we'll get much further with the Russians. We could go to a few more of the storm sites, but the ones we have checked haven't caused a blip on the EMF."

Dean pulled off his tie and tossed it and his jacket in the back seat. He rested his arms on the roof of the car, and looked over at Sam. "If the storms are deliberate, they had to have been where they were for a reason. But somebody's prize flowers … it doesn't make sense. And we can't make a connection to an event either."

Sam thought for a minute. "So far, the only thing in common is the agriculture. Or fish."

Dean smiled, "Maybe the storm is hungry?"

"No, Dean, that's you. But if we don't have anywhere to be for a few hours, I was thinking we could, um, go to the beach? And I brought my swim trunks." He smiled winningly. "Please?"

Dean shrugged. "I want to go check out the dune later tonight, but we have a couple of hours. Let's find a place to release you back into the wild, Willie."

Dean pulled up near the Nag's Head Pier, refusing during the entire drive to give in to Sam's requests to join him on the beach.

"You won't go in the water because it was the same ocean that touches Florida, right?"

"Yes, Sam, that's exactly why I won't get in the water. And I'm warning you right now that if some Florida thing tries to take you, you'll be on your own."

"A Florida thing?" Sam snorted.

"Like a rabid manatee, or something."

Sam laughed but finally acquiesced to a solitary journey to the beach. He made Dean guard the car as he twisted himself into giraffe sized pretzels changing his clothes in the backseat.

When he emerged, Dean's eyes widened. "You think for a minute that I would go with you when you are wearing those?"

Sam grinned and looked down at his neon green trunks and matching green flip flops. He pulled the fabric of one of the legs out to display the pattern. "What? The pink smiley faces?" Dean winced. "If you didn't want me wearing these, you shouldn't have bought them for me."

"So it's my fault you look like Forrest Gump? I'd've thought you would have burned those. They're from _Florida_." He pantomimed a shudder. Sam slapped him on the shoulder, grabbed the threadbare golf blanket and a towel from the trunk, and loped off for the beach.

"Just a couple of hours, Sam. And wear sunscreen. And don't go in the water for half an hour if you eat something…" he was grinning as he watched his brother disappear over a rise, casually giving him the finger behind his back.

Dean walked slowly to the end of the pier. He bought a couple of hot dogs, and ate them while leaning on the railing and looking out over the ocean. He was still in his fancy shirt and suit slacks, but he'd unbuttoned the shirt past his collar bones, and rolled up the sleeves. He looked back at Sam and rubbed his eyes. It was still eating at him that Sam said he was trying to remake himself into a version of Dean. Not that he didn't want Sam to hunt, but become like him? He'd spent his life trying to prevent that. He raised Sam differently than that, better than the way Dad raised him. And wasn't it a real pisser to find out the one person who knew him, who knew him best, thought working with a fucking demon would make him more like his big brother.

He sighed and walked back down the pier to collect Sam off the beach. No way was he going to let him stay in the water any later than this. Sharks attack at dawn and dusk and the sharks around here could have been snorting Floridian water.

* * *

They weren't far from Jockey's Ridge State Park, and Dean eased the Impala into a spot in the parking lot before Sam's hair stopped dripping. On the way in, Dean physically prevented him from going into the visitor's center, turning him toward the dunes and giving him a push. They walked out into the park on the raised wooden walkways wrapping around, over, and through the dunes.

Dean stopped at an observation point, idly looking through the provided telescope toward the sound. Sam walked further out, trying to find a walkway that would get him closer to the site where one of the bodies was found. He looked back toward the information center, did a 360 turn, and seeing no one but Dean, he swallowed, and stepped off the walkway and into, on top of, and across what every sign told him was a fragile, irreplaceable, ecology. He felt almost no twinge of conscience – maybe Dean had corrupted him. He'd probably even litter at this point – hell, he hadn't recycled for years.

He was about a hundred yards away from Dean, swinging the EMF meter back and forth like a metal detector. The meter stayed quiet and dark as he gingerly set his size fourteen sneakers on the plants he hoped would best stand up to them. Maybe he wasn't one hundred percent corrupted, maybe only ninety-eight percent.

He smiled to himself as he climbed a steep rise and had a clear view to the sound and the sun disappearing behind mainland North Carolina. He pivoted, still holding out the EMF meter, and swept in another circle. As he turned to face back toward the road and the ocean, he noticed a breeze coming their way. Plants were bending before it, and sand was swirled up into the air. He checked the angle as the wind swept silently forward, and realized it wasn't heading for him. It was heading to his right. Toward Dean.

Dean was in a drop between several small ridges, standing at the juncture of two walkways. To Sam looking down at his brother, the two walkways formed a perfect X – he couldn't help but get an image of Dean at the crossroads, making the deal. He was suddenly so terrified he thought his heart had stopped. He heaved in a breath and got his body moving.

He yelled, "Dean, move off the crosswalk." The sand was dragging his feet and legs in deeper with each step, like quicksand. He fought to move forward but was still dozens of yards from Dean.

The EMF squealed and lit up like a Christmas tree. "Dean! Move – get on the sand!"

Dean vaulted the railing and stood on a dune. "What? Why?"

He was close enough now to see Dean's frown. "Look!" He pointed toward the ocean. "See the wind? It's coming right at you."

"So what, Sam? It's wind." He turned to look toward the ocean, then looked back at Sam. "You see that too?"

Before Sam could reach him, the wind slammed into Dean, throwing him violently backwards and into the walkway. Sam heard him connect with the wood, and watched helplessly as Dean dropped. The wind tumbled him under the walkway, pushing him out the other side.

Sam was only a hundred feet away when the wind came out of nowhere to strike him, carrying sand that stung like needles. He pulled his shirt up to cover his face but it was already in his eyes, ears, mouth and nose. The wind was screaming in his ears, pushing him backwards and away from Dean.

He felt himself starting to sink into the sand, the gale wind was digging him in deeper with ever second. He crouched down as drifts swallowed his feet, his knees, and mounding up and around him, until the sand was at his shoulders, then over them and over his head. He lost what light he had, and curled his arms over his head, waiting, in the dark, for the wind to stop.


	4. Freaky Loud to Eardrum Rupturing

A/N: As always my profound thanks to Merisha and Scotia for invaluable beta work. All remaining errors are mine.

* * *

When Dean opened his eyes, he was face down in the sand. The wind was howling like a banshee. He lifted his head and spit before dragging himself up on his knees, coughing and hacking sand out of his mouth and throat. Catching the edge of the walkway, he pulled himself upright, and then up onto the wooden slats. He couldn't see much beyond the railings – most of the walkways were buried in drifts of sand. The wail of the wind was making it impossible to think. He pressed his hands over his ears, hard, as he looked around. Sam'd been just there, north of him, and he found himself running, shouting Sam's name, before he even knew he'd started moving.

He couldn't see Sam anywhere, and even if his brother was yelling for help, he couldn't have heard him over the noise of the wind. Sam's footprints were as thoroughly gone as his brother was, and it was getting darker by the second. He turned, thinking to run to the car for a flashlight, when something caught his eye. Sand was moving and a hand burst up and into the air, just like in a hundred horror movies. How fucking cool.

Except it was his brother's hand and, shit, he might be suffocating. He dove forward, falling to his knees and grabbed Sam's hand, hauling on his arm, yelling over the wind to his brother, while madly digging one handedly at the sand still burying him. He cleared Sam's upper back and shoulders and could see Sam's shirt covering his head. Just as Dean grabbed for the fabric, the sand suddenly heaved up and poured off, as Sam brought himself up on his knees, shoulders hunching as he jerked forward, fist to his mouth, coughing and sucking in air.

He yelled, "Sam, Sammy, are you OK?" He couldn't hear himself over the wind but he could feel his voice rumbling in his chest and throat. He got his hands under Sam's shoulders and helped get him on his feet. He started brushing sand out of Sam's hair until Sam pushed his arm away. "Are you OK?"

Sam's mouth was moving, and he put his hands over his ears.

Dean yelled as loudly as he could, hoping Sam could hear him because he sure couldn't hear himself. "We need to get out of this wind! Can you hear me? Are you OK?"

Sam nodded his head vigorously, sand haloing around his head, until another coughing spell bent him over. Dean put an arm over his shoulder. "You aren't OK. Let's get to the car."

Sam pulled up and away from him, then looked right at Dean and put a finger to his lips – he was shushing his big brother?

"What the hell, Sam? You're going to have to yell because I can't hear you."

Sam's eyes narrowed and his mouth moved, but Dean heard nothing over the rush of wind in his ears. He tried to catch Sam's arm again to get him to the car, but Sam waved him off. He hared off to some scrub trees, broke off a branch and held it up, oddly triumphant for a stick, Dean was pretty sure, but he followed Sam as he walked a few feet away and pointed to a smooth stretch of sand. He poked the stick in the sand and started drawing.

Dean thought he should check his brother for a fever. He yelled, "What are you doing? We should get to the car."

Sam pointed again. He'd been writing.

_NO WIND_

"You can't hear it? That's all I can hear, really loud howling wind." He looked around, and realized the ocean was still, the tufty ocean grass moving in what appeared to be a gentle breeze. He looked back at Sam. "What happened?"

_STOP YELLNG_

"Yelling?" Sam nodded. Dean concentrated on making his voice softer, which was harder than he thought it would be when he couldn't hear it, just feel it. "You can hear me?" Another nod from Sam. "You don't hear wind?" Sam shook his head. "Oh – crap, it's just me then? But you're OK right? You got out in time?"

Sam nodded again. He turned back to the sand, and started to write.

_YS U K?_

"Yes … am I OK?" He rubbed his back. "Yeah, feel like I got sunburned. My back hit the walkway, but I'm fine. Except my ears." He pulled off his outer shirt, and positioning himself carefully upwind of Sam, began shaking out the shirt and brushing himself off vigorously. He watched Sam make jazz hands, trying to fend off the sand showering him. Dean looked up innocently at Sam. "What?"

_JRK_

He held his head over to one side and hit his head, moving it up and down, hard. Then he turned his head the other way. When he straightened, Sam was staring at him. "What now, Einstein?"

Sam wrote: _WHT U DN?_

"Done?" Affronted, he replied, "I haven't _done_ anything, I was just standing there" pointing in the general direction of the sound, "looking at the beach, minding my own business."

Sam rolled his eyes and spelled out _D O I N G?_ and underlined it a couple of times.

"Oh, I was trying to get the sand out of my ears. Like water." Sam rolled his eyes. "I bet Bobby can't read this stuff when you text him, either. Buy a frickin' vowel."

_N E E E D 2 GO _

"Don't get testy, smart ass, but yeah, let's go. After all, you might run out of room to write", he said, waving his arm toward yards and yards of unbroken sand. He turned and starting walking back to the car, but had taken only a few dozen steps when he slammed to a halt, and turned around so fast Sam took a few steps backwards. "You go first," he said as he pulled his brother in front of him. "I can't hear you back there."

Shit – that had really freaked him out. He was always aware of Sam on some level, sometimes he thought it was molecular it ran so deep. Dean had no idea how panicky he would feel when he wasn't able to at least hear Sam walking, kicking up sand, breathing, clothes brushing, something…

Sam walked to the driver's side of the Impala and held his hand out, clearly expecting to drive.

"I don't have to be able to hear to drive. I'm fine."

Sam shook his head and clearly snapped his fingers, jiggling the hand up and down.

"You're just as bitchy without words as with them, you know that?" as he dropped the keys in Sam's hand and himself onto the passenger seat.

On the ride to the motel, he experimented, covering and uncovering his ears, humming, even once turning the radio up as high as it would go when Sam was looking the other way at a light. Well, it was a little funny but Sam was pissed off enough to make just one rude gesture at him, and then wouldn't look at him again until he pulled into the motel parking lot.

Sam practically stalked into their cottage, ducking his head to get through the door, and gracefully sidestepping Mrs. Pelham, before Dean had gotten out of the car. She was still standing by the door smiling vaguely as he approached. He sidled by her, muttering "Nice day, isn't it?", never taking his eyes off her hands and ducked inside.

Sam was already on the phone, scanning through the yellow pages. Dean sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. He had an incredible headache – it was just so fucking loud, like standing in front of the speakers at a concert. He started to stand a couple of times, jerking up off the bed, the need to move, to get away from the speakers, so strong it was hard to stay still. If it had been constant, the noise would be bad enough, but the wind pitch was rising and falling, changing from freaky loud to eardrum rupturing.

He watched as Sam closed his phone, and came over to sit next to him on the bed. He pulled out a little notebook and held a pen in his hand.

_I CALLD EAR DOC CAN SEE HIM TOMOR WANT GO ER?_

Dean shook his head. "This will be gone by tomorrow anyway."

_EAT HERE?_

Dean nodded, closed his eyes, and involuntarily bent forward, putting his head in his hands again. He felt a vibration in his throat and Sam's hand dropped onto his shoulder, startling him. He realized he must have groaned. This had damn well better be gone in the morning.

He felt the bed move and watched Sam step out the door and return with a duffel a few minutes later. He began warding the room, inscribing sigils in holy water and burnt sage, before salting the door and windows. When he stopped, putting his hands on his hips while surveying the room, Dean said, he hoped quietly, "Kind of shutting the barn door after the horses are out, isn't it? I think it's already inside the room, bro."

Sam grabbed the pad and pen, wrote quickly, and turned the page toward him, shrugging.

_SO NTHNG ELS CMS IN. _

He picked up the car keys and pointed to the door, pointed at his watch, and did the jazz hand again five or six times.

"Thirty minutes?"

Sam nodded and put his hand on the door.

"The groping granny may still be there. Protect the Winchester, ah, posterior dignity."

Sam grinned and made a show of carefully opening the door and checking left and right before turning back to wave at Dean as he closed the door.

Dean took a couple of Tylenol and lay down on the bed, putting an arm over his eyes. What the fuck was he going to do until this cleared up? He was stuck in a room with a TV he couldn't hear, Dad's journal, and 8 million coupon books for hammocks, discount shoes, wild pony tours and jet skis rentals. Jet skis might be awesome. You got to wear a wet suit. He did his best to relax, but the damn noise was just too loud. He settled for booting up the laptop.

Maybe if he couldn't hear anything, if there was no noise at all, he wouldn't keep expecting to hear _something_ over or under the noise of the wind. He knew rationally that there would be no engine noise, no creaking door opening and closing, no steps by the door, no sound of the key in the lock – he _knew_ that - but when the door did start to open, just as he knew it was going to, his heart still started to race, and he had his Colt in his hand and pointed at the door, even while his brain was screaming 'It's Sam, it's Sam.'

Sam, of course, saw the whole thing, and held still, a little wide eyed. Dean watched his expression change to one of understanding empathy. It was enough to make him sick to his stomach. Sam pulled a chair up to the table and sat next to him, and started writing on the pad of paper.

_U OK?_

Dean nodded and took a deep breath. He rolled his shoulders and stretched, unaware until then how tight his back and shoulders had been.

After dinner, Sam was right back on the laptop. Hardly able to argue that he could research better than his brother, he pulled up his duffel and rooted around until he pulled up a tattered Stephen King paperback. After thirty minutes of trying, he tossed that on the bed, and headed for the door.

"Going for a walk." As he reached for the door, he realized he could feel the floor vibrating through the soles of his boots. He turned, almost smashing his chin into Sam's shoulder. "Just over to the beach for a few minutes. The room is feeling too small." Sam took a step forward and reached for the handle. "By myself." He watched Sam's face drop. "I _can_ walk without help." He softened the words with a small smile.

It should have been peaceful with the tide coming in. Or going out - he never could remember what it was doing at night or the morning. He tugged off his shoes and socks and walked close to the water, the cool sand squeezing through his toes. He tried to relax, but as soon as he noticed a shell, or caught himself looking up at the stars, the infernal wail in his head would stutter and roar like it knew he'd almost been able to ignore it.

And there were a few times he thought he could hear voices in the wind, or a voice, a voice without words, rising and falling with the wind's pitch and volume, and that was just so creepy it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. And when he could string together coherent thought long enough to think about anything, all he could think about was not being able to hear. What was he going to do? Could he hunt? Anything could sneak up on him, sneak up on _Sam_ for god's sake, come at him when he was sleeping… He spun around, checking the beach, then the ocean ... enough real things snuck up behind him - now he had _imaginary_ things sneaking up on him. Fuck.

He must have spent more time than he knew watching the moon rise over the ocean, because when he glanced back toward the road and the motel, he could see a figure backlit by passing headlights on the Beach road. Even at this distance, he could tell it was Sam: the slightly hunched stance and the hands jammed deep in pockets were status quo since one of Sam's teen growth spurts had put him head and shoulders over everyone in his class, taller than any of his teachers, and even taller than his big brother.

He watched as Sam slid onto the sand and walked out to join him. They stood for a while looking out over the dark ocean, and the moon's clear path of light tracing toward them, until Sam bumped him with his shoulder. He looked over at his brother.

"We'll find this thing. We'll fix it, Sam."

Sam nodded and jerked his chin back toward the road and the motel. Dean shrugged and they walked back side by side.

* * *

Sam came awake with a start to the alarm. He turned it off, stretched a little, and almost let the sound of the ocean and his brother's regular breathing lull him right back to sleep. He hadn't had a great night, worry for Dean had kept him awake for hours. He'd gotten up from a drowse at 1 AM having remembered that he hadn't made Dean take his antacids, and found him in front of the TV with the sound off, watching an infomercial.

Dean turned his head. "Have you ever noticed that the closed captioning people can't spell? It's like watching a donkey type."

Sam gave him his pills and went back to bed. He must have gone to sleep just afterwards. It was early, the room still dark, but they would need a good two hours to get to the otolaryngologist in Elizabeth City for their 9 o'clock appointment. He needed to clean up, get Dean in the shower, feed the walking bottomless pit, and get on the road by 7 AM. He rolled over and got his feet on the floor, looking over to Dean's bed automatically, not surprised to see it empty. He swiveled his head and found Dean asleep over the laptop, his head on his left arm, his right arm splayed out across the table.

Sam took a quick shower and dressed. Dean was still asleep when he had finished. Sam stepped forward softly, not wanting to surprise him, propped a note up on the table, and grabbed the keys to the car. He stepped back in fifteen minutes later to find Dean right where he'd left him. Sam stopped for a moment to consider his next step. He opened the curtains to let the rising sun's light flood the room. He checked his brother's bed and found his ever present knife under the pillow. That left the gun Dean had pointed at him last night.

He tried jumping up and down a few times, and opened and slammed the door, with no effect He considered turning on the laptop but that scenario would more than likely end with the same gun pointed at him. He could bring in Mrs. Pelham because she deserved having a gun pointed at her at least once. Finally, he pulled his duffel onto his bed, leaned up against the headboard, and lobbed a pair of socks. Bingo, it bounced off his Dean's right hand and hit his nose. Dean didn't shoot him, although if Sam hadn't waved a large cup of coffee in front of him, the socks might not have made it.

When Dean was clean and dressed, Sam pointed at his watch and then at the door. Dean was up and moving toward the door immediately. Sam grabbed his jacket, and trotted after him. He stopped Dean with a hand on his arm before he got in the car. He was burning up. Sam stepped up to see look into his face. He grabbed his pad and pen.

His brother looked like shit. He even said it out loud, "Dean, you look like shit. Did you sleep at all?" while he wrote.

_U LOOK BAD FEVER? _

"Headache is all. I took some Tylenol when I was in the bathroom."

"Were you going to tell me?" He gestured with the pad. "The doctor was going to figure it out soon enough."

Dean pointed at the pad. "Use that, Princess."

Sam felt himself blush. Here he was talking to Dean, reminding him he couldn't hear, but damn it, now he was the one trying to communicate with cave drawings while Dean could use complete sentences – if he wanted to.

"Crap, Dean, I'm sorry." He wrote again.

_FEVR, HEDACHE, WHT ELSE? _

"There's that whole can't hear anything thing."

"Jerk."

Dean grabbed the pad and pen. "I know what that looks like when you say it". He scribbled on the pad then turned it to Sam. _Bitch_. "Are we going to leave now, Marcel?"


	5. I can hear one thing just fine

Sam kept the car keys and was surprised to get so little resistance from Dean. Dean took shotgun, and waited as Sam he slid behind the wheel and started the Impala. Dean leaned out a hand to touch the dashboard, and then turned his head toward the window. Sam turned on the radio, automatically spinning the dial until he heard something familiar. He glanced over and realized Dean was watching him.

Dean rumbled, "At least I can't hear your emo crap."

Sam shook his head. Once they were at a light, Sam picked up his pad and wrote one word.

_KINKS_

Dean nodded, "That's the kind of music my baby likes", before turning back to the window. He rubbed his forehead, and reached in his pocket for more Tylenol. He was unusually quiet during the ride, holding his head, or looking out the window. They reached the specialists' office fifteen minutes early and Sam turned in their completed paperwork just at 9 o'clock.

For the next hour, Sam tried his best to pretend he wasn't related to the mad man sitting next to him. Dean found all the energy he hadn't used in the car pacing, fidgeting, and complaining about the wait. Sam had finally exiled him to the Impala, keeping a wary eye on the car through the office window. When Dean's name was finally called, Sam ran outside, and then almost halfway down the block to catch and then herd his brother back to the office, and into an examination room.

A half hour later, he was sitting in a chair placed in front of the examination room door, arms crossed over his chest, and glowering. Dean finally stopped trying to leave. He shredded a few pamphlets – 'Hearing Loss: What You Can Do' being the first target, next the flyers on local sign language classes. When he started rifling through all the drawers and cabinets, Sam finally pointed Dean at the examination bed and glared until Dean sat.

_HOLD STILL_

"OK, Samantha." Dean smiled and began swinging his legs, hitting the drawers under the mattress rhythmically with his heels.

_WHT R U – 5?_

"Why are we even here? You know that this isn't anything with my ears, right? Something about that wind last night."

_SUCK IT UP_

"_OK_, Florence."

A doctor came in, reading through Dean's chart, looked directly at Dean. and said brightly, "I'm Dr. Tanner. So, trouble with your hearing? How bad is it?"

Sam said, "My brother …"

Dr. Tanner looked at Sam, then back at Dean. "It's statistically very unlikely for your brother to have gone totally deaf instantaneously. Everyone has some hearing left", he turned toward Dean, "right, Mr. Ford?"

Dean was looking between the two, brows pulled down in a frown of concentration. "Dude, I see your mouth moving but if you want to talk to me, write it down." The doctor shrugged and pulled out a pad of paper.

_How much can you hear?_

"I can hear one thing just fine, it's everything else that's the problem." The doctor made continue noises with his hands as he moved around the room, collecting instruments. "All I can hear is the noise of wind in my ears, really loud wind."

After the initial examination, Dean had confirmed for the doctor that his ears didn't hurt, hadn't discharged any liquid, and that he was oblivious to the tuning fork held behind each ear in turn.

The doctor left momentarily, and then returned to collect Dean after a few minutes. Talking to Sam, he listed some of the tests they were going to perform – an MRI, electronystagmography, tympanography, ABR, Stenger, X-rays, and blood tests.

Sam was a little stunned. "When will we be able to schedule those?"

The doctor looked him and smiled. "Right now. If this really is a sudden complete hearing loss, it could be symptomatic of a life threatening emergency. It may be nothing serious – tinnitus for example, but it could also be a brain tumor. I've got an opening on the MRI in", he checked his watch, "ten minutes, so we have to hustle him in there. All the other tests will be conducted here, today. It's going to take most of the day. You may want to come back to pick him about 4 PM."

Dean interrupted. "What the hell are you two talking about?"

The doctor smiled, and wrote Dean a note.

"You'll be testing me all day? Super." He looked at Sam. "Go. You could try the library here?" Sam nodded then held up his cell phone. Dean rolled his eyes. "I'll be fine."

When Sam returned that afternoon, he was called back into the doctor's office, and greeted by the doctor.

"I'm glad you came back early. Your brother is almost done. The nurse will bring him here when he's dressed."

"He had to undress?"

"Between the MRI and the CAT scan, we had to make sure he didn't have any metal on him. Your brother apparently had a _lot_ of metal on him." He glanced at some notes. "We were going to let him keep his pants on until we started the test and encountered some problems. Did you know he keeps paperclips in the hems of his jeans?" He looked up at Sam. "Is that normal for him?"

Sam nodded and said "Yeah", but couldn't think of a thing to say that would explain it. "Did you find anything?"

"The good news is that we could not find a physical or neurological cause for his deafness. We found no evidence of acoustic or other brain tumors. Unfortunately, we've concluded that he's not exaggerating. The hearing loss is complete in both ears. The Stenger test was conclusive."

Sam frowned. "What about the noise he's described – do you know what's causing that? I mean, he's hearing that, isn't he?"

"I can't see how. The loss is complete in both the middle and inner ears. He shouldn't be able to hear anything at all, and the tests we've done today prove that. The noise he says he is hearing is not blocking out other noises. His brain is not reacting to any kind of actual noise at all. To the best of our knowledge, the noise of the wind he reports is imaginary. In fact, the conclusion we are being forced to draw is that the hearing loss itself is a psychosomatic or psychophysiologic disorder brought on by stress."

"Which means what exactly? Are you saying he's making himself deaf?"

"No, not exactly, although we believe this is stress-related, rather than physiological." He consulted his charts. "Dean is running a low grade fever, has intense and debilitating headaches, is short tempered, anxious, impatient … the overwhelming evidence in cases like Dean's, with no physical cause of hearing loss, is that deafness is a response to strain or stress which he's decided, consciously or unconsciously, is intolerable. Current research suggests that the most likely triggers are feeling a high sense of responsibility in caring for someone else, or suppressed feelings of guilt. Would you say this is possible in your brother?"

Sam felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. He nodded and said, "Yes." He took a breath and chewed his lip. "What would you suggest we do next?"

"The rest of today? Get him home and into bed. We're giving him an injection for the headache that will probably put him to sleep for a couple of hours. Hearing loss of this nature, even if it is psychosomatic, can lead to severe depression. Depression can lead to loss of sleep, suppression of the immune system … I'll give him a prescription for the headaches, but you have to make sure he gets plenty of rest. All the research suggests, and I strongly recommend, professional psychotherapy for your brother."

* * *

The nurse gave Dean a shot before they let him leave. When he asked what it was for, she pointed at his head. "And that would mean…" She smiled and signed quickly at him. He rolled his eyes. "Only been deaf for a day." Her eyes widened and she quickly scribbled down _headache_ for him.

He was fuming as they left the office and walked across the lot to the car. A day of incomprehensible strangers poking at him was bad enough, but the noise constantly in his ears had him on edge all day, "You would not believe what they did to me, Sam. You couldn't believe it." He saw Sam rock a little with laughter. "Dude, I am in serious. Did you talk to the doctor? Did he tell you that they did a spinal tap?"

That got Sam's eyes on him. He shook his head.

"When I wasn't strapped down and stuck in tiny slots in big fucking machines, they were looking in places that had nothing to do with my ears. And they wouldn't tell me what any of it was for. And that noise is as loud as ever." He suddenly stumbled, Sam's arm shooting out to catch him. "Whoa. What the hell…" His legs started to feel weird, in fact he was feeling weird. He lifted his head and watched rainbows prism in the reflections from the Impala's wax job. He reached a hand out, but the car was suddenly either too close or too far away. "I don't know what they gave me, but man, you should see the light show."

Time seemed to go away for a while. He didn't remember getting in the car, but he knew he must have since he could he feel the vibration of the engine. He looked up to see the road in front of him, the white lines no longer straight but weaving and angling off in every direction. He turned his head to try to read a billboard but the words blurred and smeared before he could make out all the letters.

"We should get a hammock while we're here, Sam." He rolled his head away from the window toward Sam. "Get a hammock, 'K?" Sam smiled and nodded. Dean closed his eyes and listened to the roar in his head. When he came back to himself next his eyes were open and he was watching the light reflect off his ring. If he moved it back and forth … his left cheek was pressed up against something hard. He leaned his head back and almost cried when he realized he was humming along with the wind as it shifted, and wailed, and moaned through his head.

* * *

Sam really hoped Dean would forget about hammocks. And Dean would probably want to forget he'd spent an hour sleeping on his brother's shoulder. Sam had to brace his brother a couple of times to keep him from tipping face first into the dash when he stopped the car for a light. Dean came partly awake, and seemed cheerful, when Sam woke him at the motel, and he allowed Sam to coax him out of the car and into their room. He even tried to help Sam untie his boots, but once Sam gave him a push, he lay down and watched vaguely as Sam moved around the room.

Sam felt Dean's forehead and checked his eyes. The fever wasn't too bad, but Dean's eyes were eerie looking, glassy and unfocused, the pupils just pinpoints even in the dim room. Sam wrote a note, and thinking of Dean's pupils, wrote it in big block letters, _RIGHT BACK_, and left it and Dean's cell phone on the table by the bed. Sam had the prescriptions filled at a grocery store, and stocked up on some essentials while he was waiting. When he got back to the room, Dean was sitting up, eyes fixed on a poorly executed seascape hanging over Sam's bed. Sam sat down in front of him, knee to knee, and waved to get his attention.

Dean slowly focused on him, looked in his hand, and then held out Sam's note. Sam took it solemnly and nodded. He picked up his pad, and wrote, showing the result to Dean:

HOW R U FEELING?

He could almost see Dean processing the words. Dean leaned forward, catching himself with a hand on Sam's knee and touched the pad. Sam realized his mistake, and holding Dean's wrist, stood up and sat next to him. He put Dean's hand back on the pad and drew in another question mark.

"Wanna hammock, Sam." He waved his arm and almost clipped Sam's ear. "Hammock on the beach right there." He was speaking erractically, changing volume with almost every word. He smiled, and turned his head to look in Sam's direction. "Let's go to Mexico."

He smiled and wrote _LATER_ and then pointed back to his original question.

"Weird as shit. Can't see too good. Wind's loud again." He tried to turn his head toward the window and Sam thought he might be looking for the storm. If there really was a storm in his ears. And man, did that just hurt to think about.

Dean straightened suddenly and said, loudly, "Damn it, I want to hear myself talk." He turned his head to look into Sam's face. "Wanna hear you, hear Dad. All I have is this bitch in my head."

Sam's heart lurched as he heard the desolation in his brother's voice. He wrote,

_I WANT 2 TALK 2 U 2_

Dean stared at that for a while, mouthing the words and numbers and nodded before closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. "Ah man. This just sucks."

Sam wrote, _HEADACHE?_ and nudged Dean until he opened his eyes.

"Not as bad."

_HUNGRY?_

Sam had the chance to eat lunch but Dean probably hadn't eaten since breakfast. He waited while Dean seemed to ponder the question. Sam nudged him again.

"Not sure."

Sam stood up, pushing down on Dean's shoulder when he tried to stand up with him. Sam went to the kitchen, and brought back some chicken noodle soup, saltines, and a coke. He sat next to his brother and carefully put the soup in Dean's hands, holding it until he was sure it was secure. Dean drank most of the soup and ate all of the saltines before he started to list a little.

Sam probably could have stripped him bare and painted polka dots on him, but satisfied himself with leaving him in his boxers and a tee shirt before rolling him under the covers.

Sam should have been researching the storms – the Greenville library had given him a promising lead on a Cherokee demigod that called storms and hurricanes. He should be researching tricksters. Instead he found himself more and more engrossed in research on hearing loss and depression. He realized with a start that it was almost eleven, and shook Dean awake long enough to give him antacids, a prescription pill, and the Tylenol the doctor recommended for his fever. Once Dean rolled back onto his stomach, Sam dropped down in front of the laptop and put his head in his hands. He was starting to feel sick to his stomach.

Undue stress – well doctor, he's has been under a tiny bit of strain this year since he has a gigantic clock counting down the months, weeks, days and seconds left before he goes to Hell. Why yes, some anxiety would be natural since he's been terrified for almost a year. Shit, the doctor might as well have opened up Dean's owner's manual. 'A high sense of responsibility in caring for someone else'? That was an almost comically mild description of Dean's almost pathological need to protect him.

He rubbed his eyes and groaned. Damn his father for helping Dean see his whole life measured by his ability to protect his family. Like a sheepdog with only two lambs, cutting left, cutting right, throwing himself between his family and danger every time his father whistled him up.

And even dead, his Dad was still there, whistling up Dean to the crossroads by self sacrificing example. Sam had to admit that he sometimes dreamed of having just one more knock down. drag out fight with John Winchester.

And "suppressed feelings of guilt'? Dean already blamed himself for Dad's death, he knew Dean blamed himself for Sam's death, and being the overachiever he usually was in family matters, Dean probably managed to feel guilty for Mom's and Jessica's deaths just as much as Sam ever did.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to will away a headache. Maybe he should punch himself while he was at it. He'd managed to blame Dean for the pain he himself was going to feel when Dean died, and Dean, who already knew what it felt like to watch his brother die, felt guilty for that too. God, he'd made Dean feel guilty for saving his life by sacrificing his own. What a great way to spend what could be their last year together.

The more he read, the more he brooded, and the more inexorably he was drawn to a conclusion he despised. If he couldn't find something on that freak wind, he was going to have to admit that Dean's deafness was psychosomatic.

Tomorrow he'd research the lead on the trickster and hope to hell he found something. Because if he didn't, he knew what he had to do next, and he'd rather take on a wendigo with a spoonful of fruit salad. He was going to have to put the hunt on hold and find help for his brother. And then convince Dean to accept it. Now, he had a headache.

He powered down the laptop and yawned. He'd call the psychiatrist the doctor recommended tomorrow. He checked Dean before going to bed and was relieved to see he was still out like a light. He didn't even stir when Sam checked his temperature.


	6. This is the Croatia place?

Disclaimer: No part of anything Supernatural belongs to me. (Repeat as necessary)

A/N: My thanks as always to Merisha and Scotia who have had to beta some of these chapters more than once, and yet, still maintain a grasp on sanity.

A/N 2: # ... # denotes Sam's typed words. The site is stingy with the number of punctuation and diacritical marks it recognizes.

* * *

Sam shook Dean awake the next morning. When he could see enough of Dean's eyes to see green, he held a cup of coffee near his face. Dean groaned, but began pushing himself upright. Sam helped pull, then helped him swing his legs over the edge of the bed, before putting the cup in Dean's outstretched hand.

Dean looked up at him. "Loom much?"

Sam backed up and waited while Dean took a sip and closed his eyes. When they didn't immediately reopen, he retrieved the cup from his brother's relaxed hand. Dean shook his head, then opened his eyes wide.

"I'm fine. It was just tests yesterday." He reached for the coffee but Sam backed up, keeping it just out of his reach. He set it on the room's table. "You bitch." Dean got to his feet, shook himself a bit, and walked to the table. "I don't know what the hell they gave me yesterday, but I bet they sell it recreationally." He sat down with a grunt and grabbed the coffee.

Sam pushed a plate of toasted bagels and cream cheese toward him. Dean looked up at him. "Strawberry jam?" Sam shook his head. Dean pursed his lips, but he picked up a half and took a bite, then a gulp of coffee. Sam held out his hand and dropped a couple of pills in Dean's palm. Dean took a quick look and tossed them back with another gulp of coffee. "What are they?"

Sam pulled his chair up by Dean's and sat down, swinging the laptop around to face them both. He opened a text window.

# Scrips for headache, Tylenol #

"Not the same stuff they gave me yesterday?" He reached for another bagel half.

# Don't think so #

"Good. I don't remember the ride back at all." He chewed thoughtfully. "Had a pretty hot dream about hammocks."

# You in a hammock? #

"What you don't know, little brother, would fill … something. Not sure there's enough left for a book." He took a swig of coffee. "Did you get any leads when you were in the library yesterday?"

# How's headache? #

Dean thought for a minute. "Not too bad. Whatever the pill is, it's good. Any leads yesterday?"

# Got an appt this morning we should leave in a few #

Pointing at the laptop he said, "Bring that will you? It's quicker than the notes. Gonna take a shower." He pulled some clothes from his duffel and headed for the bathroom. As the water soaked through his hair and down his back, he rubbed the base of his spine, trying to work out any residual pain from the tap. Man, he hadn't been expecting that – or half the things they did to him.

As he soaped, he did his best to pretend that it didn't bother him that he couldn't hear the water, or someone coming in, or a gun shot, or Sam yelling for help. And that it didn't bother him that the wind screaming in his ears was not battering down the doors, shaking the walls, something - even fluttering the shower curtain. Scenes from _Psycho_ started playing out in his head, forcing him to turn to watch the door as he finished his shower. He felt pretty steady on his feet, all told, after he dressed and followed Sam out to the car.

"Can I drive yet?"

Sam smiled and shook his head, and got behind the wheel. He settled for the passenger side, and as the car moved south, watched the endless small shopping centers and sand slide by the car in slow waves. He hadn't been able to decide yet if he was screwed – which was a given - or _royally_ screwed, which he hoped was still under discussion. He was crap at interviewing when he _could_ hear. He could hunt as long as he could see the thing he was hunting, but he couldn't track anything … he scrubbed his face. His research mojo never was as good as Sam's, but considering that the last time he was supposed to research he ended up looking at the little castle … he wasn't going to turn into a liability for Sam, so he'd better figure out what it was he could do until he got his hearing back.

He didn't know he'd gone a little fuzzy again until Sam opened the passenger door and tugged a little on his arm. He swung his legs out of the car and stood up, shaking his head and cupping his hands over his ears in a futile attempt to cut down on the baying in his head. The next thing he knew, Sam's hands were on his biceps, pulling him upright. He managed to focus on Sam's face and read the worry and concern. Sam's mouth was moving, and Dean didn't have to hear to know what he was saying.

"I'm OK, I'm fine. It's just the goddamned noise." Sam shook him and hell, he was already tired of that. "Get offa me." He broke Sam's grip and looked around. "Where are we?" He turned in a slow circle, and headed toward a large wooden sign at one end of the parking lot. 'Fort Raleigh National Historic Site' – huh. Sam came up next to him as he walked, and stood by him as he read the sign. He reached over to a rack of pamphlets and pulled out a flyer for something called the 'Lost Colony'. Sam tugged on his arm, but he waved him off. 'For chrissakes, Sam, I was reading letters before you were born.' He flipped the flyer over, and then turned to his brother.

"This is the Croatia place? No, the, um," he saw Sam start to smirk. "Oh fuck, Croatoan? That place? I thought that was in Virginia." Sam pointed at the flyer – Roanoke Island. "Do you think that demon is doing this, the storms?"

Sam was writing on his pad again. Dean wished for the laptop in the car, but patiently watched as Sam wrote, _NO_, then scratched it out, and wrote _HOPE NOT HAVE APPT IN 10 MINS - AM INDIAN SPEC_

"You found something in Greenville then?" Sam nodded and shrugged – clearly a maybe. "I'm glad something good came out of yesterday." He looked back toward the buildings. "You need me for anything?"

Sam wrote _YOU COME W/ME_

"Unless you need a bodyguard, what would I do? Only so many pamphlets I can read, and I'm not going to go look at a costume display", he waved at the rack, "or visit the gift shop. This place is so friggin' gay, I feel tarnished just standing here."

_STAY IN CAR _

He turned to look at a pole holding a variety of sign posts and pointed. "Nah, I'm OK. I'll go to the beach. Call when you're ready to go." He turned just as Sam put his hand out to feel his forehead. "Damn, I hate it that you can sneak up on me."

Sam scribbled, _STAY HERE FEVER_

"No shit, Sherlock." He pulled out his little bottle of Tylenol and dry swallowed a few. He held up his cell phone. "I can't get that far, it _is_ an island. Just call – it's on vibrate."

He started down the path toward the ocean, pines towering overhead on both sides, blocking his view of the ocean, and only allowing him to see a thin rope of sky. This was old growth forest, most of these trees were probably here long before the Roanoke Colony and Croatoan. Sometimes the East Coast just gave him the heebie jeebies.

He grew up on a flat plain under a big sky. Kansas and Oklahoma and Missouri were so flat you could see miles just by climbing on a chair. Here, there were hills and mountains and more hills and trees and valleys and you couldn't see more than a couple of feet. The path turned and brought him out to the shore, with a view north over the sound. North Carolina was on his left, the Banks and the ocean to his right. The sky was a beautiful clear blue with a few scattered cirrus clouds. The breeze felt wonderfully cool on his face.

He rolled his head and stretched his shoulders. He hated having a fever, it always felt like his eyes were going to dry up and fall out of his head. But the view of the sound stretching out ahead of him was beautiful.

He wasn't sure how long he'd been watching the ocean when his attention was brought up – there were black clouds growing, billowing and rolling, mushrooming until they appeared to fill the sky. He felt the wind pick up, tugging at his clothes, until it suddenly slammed into him, making him stagger backwards.

Two things happened at once – the howl of wind in his ears cranked up in volume, and his headache was back, shooting red hot pain through his skull, making his vision white out. His legs crumbled under him. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees, holding his ears, heaving air in and out, and he could feel a rumble and vibration all through his chest and throat. Fuck, he must be screaming.

He felt something against his thigh and slapped a palm down against his leg. His cell phone. Sam.

* * *

Sam had drawn a blank on weather movers and shakers in Pamlico, Croatan, Hatteras, Cherokee, Iroquois, Oneida, and Tuscora legends and mythology at the Greenville library the day before. The Gulf of Mexico and Floridian Indian lores were rich with legends of thunderbirds and other storms gods, but he couldn't find a connection with the weather pattern here. The best thing the library helped him find was Mr. Adahy Jones, an expert on local history and lore, who worked out of the Park. To Sam's disappointment, while Jones was more than willing to talk, he had nothing that could shed light on the storms or Dean's condition.

When he stepped outside after thirty minutes, Dean was nowhere in sight. Sam checked inside the car just in case his brother had returned, but it was empty. He started toward the path to the ocean, but had taken only a few steps when a blast of wind struck him, pushing him so hard and so suddenly, that he had to step backwards to keep from falling. The sky turned an ugly purple black, thick clouds blocking the sun so thoroughly it was almost like nightfall. The wind was jerking trees back and forth, whipping up litter and a choking black cloud of pine needles. He turned his back into the wind, and dragged his cell phone out of his pocket, almost losing it to the tempest, and pushed speed dial one.

He had nothing to hold onto, and was shoved forward unmercifully, falling to his knees once, before he was back at the car, pressed into the passenger door and window. He could see tourists and a few park employees scrambling toward the buildings, pulling at unmoving doors, mouths were opening and closing, hands and arms pointing and gesticulating. The wind was pushing trash cans sideways into buildings, rocking fences and fence posts, stripping leaves off plants, whirling pamphlets and signs in a mad dance in the air, pulling everything into a funnel snaked down from the black thunderhead directly above them.

His back was being hammered with debris and rocks hurled by the wind. He let the wind push him over the hood of the Impala, but he was able to grab the driver's door handle to catch himself before he slammed into the next car in the row. He tried ducking down, letting the car block most of the wind, but it found him, slamming his feet out from under him, whirling over the car and trying to push him away from the door. He braced his legs and opened the door, still almost breaking a bone as the door slammed open faster than he could drag his arms out of the way. He dove in, using both arms to drag himself onto the seat, watching fast food wrappers, M&Ms, sunglasses, and loose change swirl in a mini cyclone inside the car.

He held his feet against the bottom of the door frame and pulled on the door handle with everything he had. He felt the muscles bunch and pull across his back and down his arms, his thighs were straining but it felt like the door was welded open. He could do this – had to do this.

Sam thought about the last time he'd done something he never believed possible. He tried not to, but, with a twist of his stomach, he remembered Gordon's neck and the razor wire. He set his teeth and heaved, feeling the tendons in his neck and jaw pop up, but he didn't stop until the door slowly started to come toward him.

When it finally slammed shut, his fingers released and he shot backwards head first toward the passenger door. He took a long shuddering breath before he checked the glove compartment, closed, check, and reached under the seat. Cassettes in box – check. He looked for his cell phone and for a moment couldn't remember where it was and wondered if it had been sucked away into the wind. He slapped at his pants until he felt the phone in his left front pocket and almost ripped the fabric hauling it out. He hit speed dial one again, bringing the phone to his ear, keeping his attention focused on the path Dean had taken to the beach.

It felt like an hour before he saw a figure stumbling down the path toward him. Dean was holding his hands over his ears, bent forward at the waist, taking uneven steps, being pushed and battered by the wind, slipping in and out of view as flying debris would momentarily surround him, then swirl away. Sam was moving before the debris parted to show Dean on his hands and knees.

He jerked up on the door handle and the wind did the rest, ripping the door out of his hands. He didn't have time to close the door, and wincing, bid a brief farewell to his young life if something happened to the cassettes. He began to struggle against the wind toward his brother. Paper was slapping into him, sand from the not so distant beach was abrading his exposed skin, then working its way up his noise and into his mouth.

Sam threw an arm up to protect his eyes and started to work his way toward his brother. He drew himself hand over hand using metal sign posts, the handicapped parking signs long since ripped off, sometimes only holding onto the next post by his fingernails. He ducked and avoided the larger jetsam thrown at him by the wind, but the smaller pieces found their mark over and over again.

Unbelievably, he heard a high pitched noise, a kind of grinding screech, over the insanely loud howl of the wind. He scanned the area as best he could, and finally identified the noise as coming from the massive wooden sign at the front of the parking lot. He ducked his head and reached the next post, cursing as he felt something hit the arm protecting his eyes. He looked toward where he'd last seen Dean, and was relieved to see him moving again. But something wasn't right.

Dean stood up and turned his back to Sam to face into the wind, almost casually. It looked as if the wind wasn't even there, or the storm was parting and passing by, leaving Dean untouched. As Sam watched through watering eyes, Dean shot both arms straight out in front of him, then up over his head, then slowly lowered and angled them out, until they were stretched straight out from his sides.

Pamphlets, pine needles, and paper bags, branches, park signs, and shutters ripped off the buildings were still swirling madly in the maelstrom between the buildings, but Dean was oblivious. Sam was only a few feet from him when the huge Park sign ripped loose, and began spinning toward them both, flipping end over end. Sam fought forward toward his brother, screaming Dean's name in warning, reflexively but uselessly.

Dean's arms dropped to his side and the world went still.

Sam watched as the huge sign hurtling toward them dropped to the pavement, skid a few more feet, and came to rest a few inches from his brother's boots. In the newly made silence, the noise of a shower of leaves, signs, and sand pattering down around them was so loud it almost made him jump. He ran forward, able finally to reach his brother, and rested his hand on Dean's shoulder. He looked up and saw blue sky overhead, the black clouds remaining were skidding westward as they evaporated.

Well, he thought, screw the psychiatrist appointment. There was no way in hell that _that_ was psychosomatic. He was so relieved he could feel himself grinning, but so spooked out, he was shaking a little.

He squeezed Dean's shoulder, but didn't feel him react. Keeping his hand in place, Sam stepped in front of his brother, almost afraid to see what damage the flying debris may have inflicted. He was relieved to see Dean's eyes were open and quickly scanned him for injuries, but other than some scrapes and small cuts and some new rips in his jeans, he didn't see anything serious until he looked at his brother's face again.

Dean's head was tilted back and his eyes were only halfway open. Sam could see nothing but white, no iris or pupil at all. Unnerved and anxious, he shook Dean a little, tapping his shoulder, tapping his arm, and finally tapped his cheek. Dean took a deep breath and rocked his head forward, blinking furiously.

Sam tapped Dean's cheek again, and watched with relief as Dean seemed to recognize him. He smiled, then frowned, as he looked Sam over, down to his feet, then back up at Sam's face. Dean had to clear his throat a few times, but finally rasped out, "What happened to you? You're bleeding".

Before Sam could look down to check himself, Dean's eyes dropped closed, and Dean dropped just like them, collapsing so fast it was like a weight was pulling him down.


	7. I’m having a very bad day

A/N: I really appreciate the wonderful reviews. And thanks everyone for the alerts and favs.

A/N 2: Just a reminder. # ... # denotes Sam's typed words.

The first thing he became aware was a rock digging into his ass. The second was that the volume of the howling noise in his head was almost bearable. He might have sighed in relief, he certainly felt the huff of air leaving his throat and mouth, but the rock took priority. He was sitting up, leaning against something, the rock grinding through the back of jeans and into his right butt cheek. He tried to shift away, and whatever it was he was leaning against suddenly shifted behind him – Sam, he guessed - and he felt what had to be his brother's orangutan sized arm constrict across his chest. He cracked his eyes open and looked up to see strangers surrounding him, some looking at him, all with their mouths moving silently, and slammed his eyes shut again. Fucking hell, what was with the crowd?

"Sa ... Sam." He could feel the vibration of his voice stutter and stop. He tried to push at Sam's arm but raising his arms was killing him. What the hell? He felt something near his mouth, and opened his eyes to see a water bottle. He forced his hand up to hold it, but it was mostly Sam holding the bottle to his mouth as he drank.

"Gotta move, Sam. Ass is killing me." This time he leaned back hard against Sam, bracing himself and hoisted his hips up and to one side. He cautiously opened his eyes again, looking up, to see the crowd gone, but the fresh hell of emergency vehicles pulling into the parking lot. He concentrated, hoping to be able to hear the sirens, but if the sound was there, it was weaving in and out and under the howl of wind.

"Crap, help me up before they get their hands on me", but Sam only held him tighter. He cranked his head around to direct a glare at his brother. "I'm going to get you for this, you know that, right?" Sam just smiled at him. Soon enough, Dean could feel Sam's chest vibrate as he talked to the EMTs.

"I'm fine. Sam, if you would let go, I'd get up." Sam relaxed his grip, and he was able to pull up his knees. He could feel Sam talking behind him, and when one of the EMTs offered his hand, Dean grabbed it. The EMT pulled him up but let go just before Dean could get his balance. He sat down heavily on a gurney he didn't know had been moved up behind him. He was on his back before he knew it, being poked and prodded, cleaned, pressed, and wrapped. "No hospital." An EMT was standing over him, signing quickly. He closed his eyes and groaned, shaking his head. He'd only been deaf two fucking days. He opened his eyes again and tried to pitch his voice a little louder. "No hospital." A couple of heads turned, and mouths opened, but nothing else. He pulled himself up. "I'm fine. Sam! Tell them no hospital."

He looked around and saw Sam sitting just inside one of the ambulances, waving at him. There was a tech hovering by his side. "Sam, you OK?" Sam made a gesture, hand flat, motioning down. "I'm talking too loud?" Sam and the techs around them all nodded. He said in what he hoped was a quieter voice. "Are you OK?" Sam nodded again, but when he craned his head, he saw the tech wiping blood off his brother's arm.

He hopped off the gurney, and shrugged off the hands on his elbows and his shoulders. He glared at the technician closest to him. "I'm walking over there", he growled, pointing at Sam. He took a step or two, feeling steadier almost immediately, and stalked the yard or two over to Sam. There was a honking big nail in Sam's right arm, just below his elbow. Dean peered around the EMT – it went right through his arm.

"OK, _he_ goes to the hospital. His last tetanus shot was two years ago. He's not allergic to anything we know about…" Sam tapped his shoulder, making him look over. He was shaking his head.

"They need to know this stuff before you go in… and Sam, you're a mess. And that arm needs stitches."

Sam was shaking his head, and talking to someone next to Dean. One of the techs started writing on a piece of paper.

YR BRO SAYS NO HOSPITAL

"For me, yeah, but he needs to go. That's got to come out."

NOT BAD. WE'LL TAKE IT OUT HERE. JUST NEEDS A STITCH.

"A stitch?" He stepped forward and leaned over the EMTs shoulder, only to meet Sam's hand holding him back. The tech was putting the paper in front of him.

ITS OK! FLESH ONLY

Dean looked up and Sam nodded and smiled until they numbed his arm and pulled the nail out with a pair of pliers, then he looked a little pale.

Dean said, "You sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"

Sam cracked a small smile, shaking his head. Dean watched critically as the doctor, it turned out, irrigated, stitched and bandaged Sam's arm. The doctor gave Sam two more injections, two prescriptions, and a hand out of the ambulance before walking over to another injured person.

"Let's get you back to the hotel, Sam. Can you walk all right?"

Sam mouthed 'Yes' and nodded as he exaggerated his steps toward the car.

Dean glanced toward the car then back at his brother. "Why's the door open, Sam?" He watched Sam's eyes widen. "The door was open during that wind? Are my cassettes OK?" Sam hunched his shoulders and looked down. Dean ran for the car.

* * *

He finally got to drive. It was eerie and wrong not to hear the engine turn over. The only way he knew, for sure, that it had started was the vibration he felt through the seat and the steering wheel. He missed the sound of that throaty engine almost as much as he missed hearing Sam's voice. He tapped on the accelerator to feel it rumble through him again. Sam touched his arm. He glanced over.

"Just feeling it to make sure it's on." Sam still looked worried. "I'm feeling fine, Sam. You're the one with the injury. Your arm could get infected, and you're got bandages up and down …", he caught what he was going to say. "You should have stayed in the car. Or gone to the hospital." Sam was shaking his head. "Let me get you back to the hotel before you turn into a solid bruise. Then I'll go fill your prescriptions."

Sam nodded and leaned back against the seat, closing his eyes. By the time Dean got back to the motel and maneuvered Sam into bed, the energy he'd found earlier was starting to wane. He drove to a pharmacy to fill the prescriptions, and waited so long he almost fell asleep standing up. He shook himself awake and looked around. This was his first time out in public without Sam since the freak wind.

And god, he hated everything about it. He was jumping at everything. He couldn't hear the announcement that his scrips were filled, so he had to go up to check. When he got to the counter, the young tech started to hit on him, talking away, and casting knowing eyes at him. When he told her he couldn't hear, he watched her expression change from one of interest to one of pity. On the drive back, he started wondering how long it was going to take to find this thing and kill it, because he was getting seriously pissed off.

He almost broke Mrs. Pelham's arm when she drifted up behind him in the parking lot. He probably yelled at her, but seriously the touchy-feely thing with his ass wasn't getting any funnier. He marched back to the room and almost dropped the pharmacy bag when the door handle moved just as he touched it. Couldn't hear the old lady, couldn't hear the door lock moving, he was jumping around in a panic, falling asleep standing up, and that chick had pitied him.

"Fuck it, Sam, get out of my way." He pushed past him into the room, tossing the prescriptions onto Sam's bed, then stopped with his back to the door. "I'm having a very bad day. If I don't punch something soon, I'm going to kill someone." He started to pace around the room. He saw something out of the corner of his eye, and spun so fast, he almost overbalanced. It was Sam moving to the table to open up the laptop.

"More typing?" He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "You should be in bed."

Sam motioned him over to sit next to him.

"How's your arm?"

Sam made an OK sign.

Dean sat heavily on the chair, dodging Sam's hand as he tried to feel his forehead. "I said I'm having a bad day, Sam, not that I'm sick."

# What happened at the park? #

He looked away from the computer and right at Sam. "What do you mean? There was a storm, you called, and I came back … not sure why I was on the ground …" He ground to a halt. He really hadn't thought about it.

Sam gestured to the laptop again.

# Remember anything? #

"Just coming back from the beach, clouds, my head was killing me." He looked up and squinted. "Clouds, just clouds, and wind, and ... the noise in my ears was a lot quieter when I woke up." He looked back at Sam. "Although it's getting loud again now. What did you see?"

Sam stared at the screen for a moment and tapped a pencil against this bottom lip. He finally typed:

# Nothing #

"You had to think about 'nothing'? I _so_ believe you. You can't even lie well when you type." He ignored Sam's glare. "You have a plan? 'Cause if you don't, I want to check out the golf course and the fish place." He checked his watch. "It'll take a couple of hours, but it's not even Noon. So, if you're feeling up to it," he pushed up from the table, "we can go anytime."

* * *

All Sam had as warning was Dean clapping his hands to his ears before he dropped like a rock. Sam wasn't fast enough to stop his brother from hitting the floor, but he caught enough of Dean's shirt to prevent him from banging his head on the table on the way down. Sam got his hands under Dean's arms and helped him up and over to his bed in one heave. He got out the thermometer from the first aid kit, and practically had to sit on Dean to keep it in his ear long enough to register.

Sam _knew_ he should have been more suspicious of Dean's burst of energy after the storm at the park. He was grateful for it, because he sure couldn't have driven back after the doctor gave him those shots, but he should have checked Dean sooner.

He waited impatiently until the thermometer beeped. Dean's fever was back up to over 102. What the hell was causing this? Dean'd been practically asleep prior to the storm, on some kind of spooked out power trip during, and now, he was down, again. Sam wondered if the pain redoubling just when Dean was getting ready to investigate was a clue. That could help his research. That and whatever this was seemed to be sucking him dry. Sam had an uneasy feeling, something was teasing at him, something he should be remembering …

Without getting up, Sam reached over to the bedside table, and got the prescription bottles. He leaned forward and lifted Dean's head with a hand on the back of his neck, banked up pillows behind him, and gently lowered Dean down onto them. He was conscious but his eyes were still screwed shut, but his arms and hands had relaxed enough that Sam was able to bring them away from his head and down by his side. Sam put a hand on Dean's arm and squeezed, then squeezed again.

Dean groaned and muttered something obscene before cracking his eyes open enough for Sam to see his pupils. He held out a couple of pills, and showed them to his brother before putting them in Dean's hand. Dean swallowed the pills, and most of the bottle of water Sam snagged from the table and handed him.

Dean cleared his throat, and said, "What happened? Did I pass out?"

Sam nodded. He watched as Dean shook his head, and then winced.

"I thought I was doing better."

Sam pulled out the pad, but snagged the laptop instead after Dean groaned in frustration again. He angled the laptop screen toward Dean and typed:

# You stay here. I'll go to sites, interview #

"I hate this, Sam. What good am I on a goddamned hunt if I can't even stand up?"

# I'll find it #

Dean rubbed a hand over his face, scrubbing his eyes. "No, not by yourself. Give me a minute and I'll be ready to go with you."

Sam nodded again. He stepped into the bathroom and wWhen he came out a few minutes later, Dean was sound asleep, not even stirring at Sam's light touch on his arm. He plugged Dean's phone into its charger, set it on the bedside table with a note, and gently closed the door behind him.

The sites were as much a bust as the others, these were just further apart. He'd had to drive north almost twenty miles, plodding through heavy traffic to the golf course, then south, past the motel, over more bridges and past squat lighthouses to reach the fishery. Sand was banked so high on his left, he couldn't see more than glimpses of the ocean, and the sound side was marsh, scrub, marsh, scrub … The houses were identical down to the construction and wood, and to his jaundiced eye, they began to look like neatly stacked piles of gray driftwood. He reached Avon at 4:00 o'clock, now almost 50 miles south of the motel, and waved a silent EMF meter around the deserted fishery.

At least he could see the water here. He put his hands on his hips and stared out over the ocean. He needed time to think. This was their fourth day, and they were no further to solving this thing than they had been when they arrived. Instead, Dean's hearing was gone, replaced by the howl of hurricane winds, something Sam couldn't even begin to imagine, and it hurt to watch Dean's energy practically leeching out through his skin.

And damn, if not being able to talk to his brother wasn't making him so frustrated he practically couldn't see straight. Dean should be right there with him. They should be working on this case together, tossing ideas around, Dean seeing patterns, Sam doing his Encyclopedia Brown, arguing about music, restaurants. They only had so much time before the deal came due and to lose any of it was unacceptable.

He shouted in frustration, pounding his fist against this thigh. He had nothing. No local ghost, spirit, fugly, could do what this thing did in nature, let alone what it had done to his brother. What had Dean called it? A bitch. It hadn't occurred to him to ask Dean how he knew the thing was female, but he was going to check that off as Clue Number One. Dean's loss of hearing officially became Clue Number Two. Clue Three – storms, not sand, beaches, oceans, just storms. He'd spent too much time looking where it wasn't. And he grudging admitted, Clue Four was Dean's freaky behavior at the park. He was involved more than either of them knew.

He climbed over a dune, through and over the fishery buildings and got back to the Impala. He leaned against the car and texted a message to Dean.

# U OK? Hedng bck. 2 hrs #

If Dean was awake, he should answer pretty quickly. He scratched his chin and let a flight of brown pelicans skimming just over the water catch his attention. After a few minutes, he ducked in the car and started north. He'd left Dean alone in the room for the better part of four hours. If he stayed in the room he'd be fine – the room was warded. But knowing Dean … his heart rate suddenly shot up. He had a very bad feeling about his brother. He pushed down on the gas, cursing the two lane road and every single redneck clogging up the road ahead of him, driving at exactly the speed limit in tricked out pick-up trucks sprouting fishing poles like antennas.

He'd kill his brother if he'd left the room.


	8. A Harley almost as big as the Impala

A/N: Some of you may remember from Chapter 1 that Terry (Thru Terry's Eyes) had requested Deaf Dean stories. I agreed to write one, and here you are reading it. But I made a request back - I asked her to give me some shirtless Dean torture - because, well, who wouldn't want that from time to time? But, I digress. Terry just started posting that story! If you have not already, please read her new fic, _Lost to Madness_.

A/N 2: #... # denotes texted or typed words.

* * *

Dean woke up with a start, and felt something in his throat that was probably a groan. He got himself upright, and swung his legs to the floor. He looked around the room. Where was his little brother? He was about to heave himself to his feet and check the bathroom, when he saw his phone and a note on the table. He checked the time. Almost two. He was so not taking one of those pain killers again. Even if he was useless, he'd like to be awake and useless.

But there was one thing he needed to do. He'd been terrified during that storm at the park. Not by the wind, even though he'd seen enough tornado destruction growing up to last more than a lifetime. What terrified him was that his brother could have been buried under debris, would have been out of his of his sight, maybe screaming for help, and he wouldn't've been able to find him.

He tucked his phone in his pocket, grabbed his wallet, made sure his knife was securely in his boot – check, check, check – finally found a room key behind the television, check, and headed for the door, with a quick detour to pick up Sam's note. He was pretty sure he knew what it was going to say - something like 'Stay in the room' - like he was some kind of parcel Sam could leave and pickup later. Hell, at this point, maybe he was.

Once he stepped outside, he held the note up in the light to read it. Got it in one. Sam had added an underlined 'Please' but the direction was the same. Sit, stay. Well, screw that.

He jammed the note in his pocket, closed the door behind him, and headed for the motel office. Mrs Pelham silently cooed and clucked at him, pursed her lips, and nodded seriously when he apologized for scaring her that morning, and told her he was having some hearing difficulties. She let him use her yellow pages and he found a Radio Shack less than a mile away. He thanked her and stepped out of the office. The sun was bright, the air clear, the sky a perfect blue … a walk would probably make him feel a lot better. Or at least not worse. He headed north.

He didn't move fast, but he was pretty steady on his feet, until the first car appeared in his peripheral vision. He was so surprised he felt his heart stutter. Small shadows crossed the sidewalk at his feet, and even though he knew it was just gulls wheeling overhead, he kept checking anyway. He put his head down and walked on, furious with himself. He was literally jumping at shadows, like a kid scared of the dark.

He was exhausted by the time he reached the store. He leaned against a wall for a few minutes to catch his breath. He'd come into the center's lot through the back, and took the time to scan the front, noting details. He stopped for a long minute to stare at the name of the shopping center on a prominent sign by 158. Croatan. He wasn't sure if he should laugh, or come back later to salt and burn it. With his luck, it was the same thing as Croatoan. Sam would know. Dean shook himself and went into the store.

The clerk who helped him was alright - in his 50's maybe, tall but not as tall as Dean, gray hair pulled back in a pig tail, dorky store vest, 'Jack' on his name tag. He didn't react when Dean told him he was having trouble with his ears, just listened to Dean's description, then scribbled down a question and held up the paper for Dean to read.

SOMETHING TO FIND A CHILD OR SENIOR CITIZEN?

Dean laughed and nodded. "Yeah, a child. Rambunctious. He keeps running off, and I can't hear him to find him."

After he selected a child locator and paid, Jack went so far as to help him unpack the kit, install the batteries, and test the equipment. The monitor was no bigger than his cell phone, and he got four little lo-jack tags that he could attach to his little brother. Sam might find one or two, but Dean would lay money he wouldn't find all four quickly.

When they were finished, Dean could fit everything into one pocket of his jeans, leaving him with no incriminating box or bag for Sam to find. Dean thanked the guy and headed out, angling behind the center again toward the Beach road. It was only a couple of blocks, and he was very thankful he had his hands free by the time he made it, because he'd definitely needed them to keep from faceplanting on the street or someone's yard.

He stood and breathed deeply for a minute, hoping to calm the headache lurking behind his eyes. He felt his front pocket and found the little bottle of Tylenol. His hands were shaking so much he almost couldn't get the bottle open, but he was finally able to tap out and dry swallow four pills. He looked south, considered the mile he had to walk, and sighed. At least he thought he did. He spotted a bench across the street overlooking the ocean, and on a whim, made his way across the street and to the bench.

He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He was so damned tired. He just needed a few minutes and then he'd be fine to walk back to the motel. Sam wouldn't even have to know he'd been gone. The wind was moaning in his ears, his head was pounding, and he just couldn't think straight. Everything was fragmented, sucked down into the sand all around him, disappearing and reappearing as the wind moved. The only thing he didn't want to think about was the only thing that kept coming back. What if he had to spend the last few months of his life deaf?

He'd always been sure that being deaf would be easier than being blind. Now he was sure that neither was better, but being deaf was a lot harder than he'd ever thought. Not that he wanted to trade or anything, sight was great, wonderful, perfect in fact, but it provided less than 180 degree coverage, while hearing was 360. Anything could, and _had_, he reminded himself, come up behind him. He couldn't sleep with his "peepers open" either … now that had been funny. Hell, he wouldn't hear anything like that again. And he'd saved himself and Sam all the time when they were kids by hearing things, and saved himself, both of them sometimes, over and over, by hearing things since they'd been hunting together.

And Sam, oh god, Sam. Dean would never hear his brother curse a blue streak when he stubbed his toe, or yell, or sigh, or anything. He'd never hear Sam pecking away at the laptop, or hear him clearing his throat, being bitchy, funny, patient, all emo, or snoring. Or hear the little noise he made when he fell asleep. Or hear him screaming.

He couldn't hear his Dad's voice mail message anymore.

He was pretty damn sure he'd still be able to hear hellhounds.

It had to be temporary. It just had to be. Sam has to have found something. Dean's hands were shaking so badly he pushed them under his thighs and sat on them. He was starting to hyperventilate and he knew he had to calm down or pass out. After a minute, he pulled out his phone to text Sam and saw that he'd missed a text earlier. Fuck – he'd been so wrapped up in his pity party he never felt the phone vibrating. Sam was still well over an hour away.

He tapped in a reply: # Ned picp pik ppikup plz # He shook his hands and angled the phone out of the sun. His phone vibrated a few minutes later.

# U need pickup #

Man, was Sam going to be pissed. # Yes #

# R u at motl #

# No # There wasn't an immediate reply. He stared at the phone, biting his lower lip. He found the punctuation signs and tried again. # Sm? #

# Whr #

# Bea ch rd ocen acs at dun st # He grimaced at the phone. He wasn't getting any better at this.

# Y #

Dean stared at that for a minute. Sam either wanted to know why he was there or he'd said yes. He decided to go with the 'yes' because he couldn't possibly text an explanation to Sam. He settled for # K # and pocketed his phone.

The sun was starting to set behind him, but it was still warm enough to pull off his outer shirt, and lean back in his tee. He sat up with a jerk and felt along the back of his jeans. No gun? Fuck, I'm naked. He patted his pockets – some M&Ms covered in lint, a quarter, a nickel, and a paperclip. He ate the M&Ms and started to laugh. He had his boot knife, he wasn't naked, but here he was wondering if he could use a paperclip as a weapon? He might as well smelt the coins into a gun. God, he was becoming a paranoid freak. He smiled, knowing Sam would say he'd been one for years.

The wind screamed in his ears making him lean forward to hold his head in his hands. He jerked around when something behind him blocked out the sun. It was a big guy, biker maybe, hair loose under a headband and down to his shoulders. Biker Dude was wearing a Black Sabbath tee shirt, a leather vest, wrist bands, studs everywhere, and tattoos snaking up both his arms to disappear under his sleeves. He jumped up and squared off with the guy.

"What can I do for you, buddy?"

The guy held his hands up, mouth moving, and reached for his pocket.

Damn it, maybe he should have sharpened the fucking paperclip. Dean bent to retrieve his knife, and almost kept going straight to the ground, but the biker jumped forward and caught him. Dean growled and shook him off, holding himself steady on the back of the bench, and watched as the guy found a pen and wrote briefly on a slip of paper.

Dean was wary but accepted the paper between two fingers and took a moment to glance it. It was a receipt for a glass tobacco pipe from the head shop next to the Radio Shack. What, the guy's offering him a toke? He frowned and looked up. The guy was gesturing broadly, flipping his hand over and back. Dean looked down and turned the receipt over, and read 'I work at Radio Shack, remember me?' Dean looked at him again. It was Jack – he'd let his hair down in a big way.

He couldn't help it – he grinned at the guy and said, "Nice look, Jack."

Jack smiled back. He took back the receipt, and wrote again.

Dean read 'Need ride?' When he looked up, Jack was pointing at a Harley almost as big as the Impala. Holy crap. He nodded.

"Hell, yeah. That's a beauty. I'm just down the road at the Seaside."

Jack nodded and started to walk to the motorcycle.

Dean pulled out his phone sent a text to Sam. # nvrhmd, got rid motl # He held up a hand to Jack as he waited for Sam's reply.

# what? #

He stared at the phone for a second, and then speed dialed Sam's number and handed his phone to Jack. "Dude, my brother Sam is going to answer and will probably yell at you."

Jack grinned and pantomimed holding the phone away from ear. His brows went up and he started to talk into the phone.

Dean said, "Tell him I have a ride to the hotel."

Jack nodded and spoke into the phone, once looking at Dean critically.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Tell him I'm fine, just getting a ride."

Jack talked for another minute, then hung up, and handed the phone back to Dean. He pulled what turned out to be a gas station receipt from his pocket, wrote on it, and handed it to Dean.

'Sam back hour, meet at motel'

Dean nodded and accepted a helmet from Jack. As he climbed on the back, he leaned forward and spoke in Jack's ear. "Know a good bar? With a pool table?"

* * *

Sam stormed out of the cottage, torn between worry and anger. Dean was not in the room, and was nowhere in sight. He walked to the car as he called Dean's number. The same stranger as before answered the phone.

"Sam, is that you?" Jack, that was his name, Jack was shouting over noise in the background.

"You were supposed to take my brother to the motel. What happened?" Sam could hear Dean's voice in the background, laughing, and Jack came back on the line.

"Dean told me to tell you that he's fine. We're at Harley's. Get onto 158, it's north of the motel at mile marker 9."

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. He was at mile marker 14 or so. "You sure he's OK? He's been sick and …"

"He's beating us all at pool, but he's not too steady on his feet, and I can tell his head is killing him. I tried to bring him back about a half an hour ago, but he said he'd be good until you arrived."

"Thanks, Jack, I'm only a few miles out."

Sam was able to squeeze the Impala into a space in the parking lot about twenty minutes later. He opened the door and stood up in a sea of motorcycles. Of course, his brother would go to a biker bar when he was sick and deaf.

He stepped into the bar and quickly spotted Dean at the pool tables in the back. Dean was holding a cue, laughing, and gesturing at someone. The place was crowded and smoky and Sam moved as unobtrusively as he could, not wanting to jostle anyone in a busy, loud, and rowdy biker bar. The first time he felt a hand brush his arm, he didn't think twice, but the touches became more blatant and deliberate as he moved toward the back.

He straightened up to his full height and took another look around him. There didn't appear to be any women in the bar at all. He checked the guys on the small dance floor. His sick and deaf brother was in a gay biker bar. Now that was funny.

He dropped some of the unobtrusive, and shouldered his way through the crowd. Dean hadn't spotted Sam yet, proof he wasn't operating on all jets, since normally Dean's little brother radar would have brought his head up and moving until his eyes locked onto Sam. Dean's eyes were too bright, he was flushed, and he kept rubbing his right eyebrow, but he was laughing and talking.

Sam was having trouble reading the guys at the table. They seemed friendly enough but there were too many eyes focused on Dean. One big guy in studded leather was standing right behind his brother; the way he was looking at Dean set off all sorts of alarms in Sam's head. Every time Dean moved, this guy moved with him, possessively, always staying right behind Dean, and way too close for Sam's comfort.

Guys around the table were yelling out encouraging phrases over the din – Sam heard "Does this guy know he's yours?" and "Go ahead, grab his ass. He can't be straight and that pretty." The guy in studs was shaking his head and laughing. All of this going on even though they knew Dean couldn't hear.

Sam saw red and bulldozed through the crowd. The next time Dean moved, Sam stepped forward, body checking the studs, and stood between his brother and the biker. The guy was big, but Sam towered over him. He looked around the room, catching their eyes, getting their attention.

"You want a piece of him, you'll need to come through me."


	9. Tell me what you want!

A/N: As before, # ... # denotes typed or texted words.

* * *

"You want a piece of him, you'll need to come through me."

There was a roar of laughter around him and some calls of "Baby, I'd love to come through you". Sam thought about what he'd just said. His felt his lips quirking up and his cheeks began to burn. Crap, he was blushing. So much for the tough guy image.

But he still had something to say to the stud guy. He took a step forward. "You are way too close, man. Back off. I'm taking him home."

The guy held his hands up, but whatever he was trying to say was drowned out by more gales of laughter. He dropped his shoulders and raised his hands in surrender. He felt something behind him, and spun around.

Dean was holding his arm, looking around the room with wide eyes. He said to the crowd, "This is my brother, Sam." He then looked between Sam and stud guy. "Sam", he said, "meet Jack. Jack, my brother, Sam."

Sam huffed out a laugh, as Dean turned back to the pool table to line up a shot.

Jack reached out a hand, which Sam shook. "Nice to meet you, Sam. Look, they don't mean anything by it. Good looking straight guys always take a some heat in here, that's all." Jack gestured toward Dean's back and said, "I take it you're usually right there?"

Sam nodded, and said, "Yeah. That's my place. We cover each other."

Jack said, almost apologetically, "He asked me to stay behind him until you got here, said it made him less jumpy." They both turned when there was a commotion at the table.

Dean shook hands with a couple of guys before he set the cue on the table and turned toward Sam, visibly swaying. "Maybe it's time to go?"

Sam nodded and got one of Dean's arms up and over his shoulder. It took a few minutes to get out of the bar even with Jack running interference. Sam was blushing furiously again by the time they got outside. Mrs. Pelham might have years of experience, but compared to this crowd, she was an amateur.

Sam deposited his brother in the passenger seat and closed the door. He looked down at Jack. "He's usually not very trusting. Thanks for watching out for him."

"Wasn't a problem, he looked like someone who needed a hand. I'm real sorry you heard the guys saying those things - I wouldn't have let anyone do more than look anyway. Tell Dean, if he needs anything else, he knows where to find me." He started back toward the bar, and then glanced at Sam. "Does Dean have any children?"

Sam looked back at him blankly. "No. Did he say he did?"

Jack grinned and said, "No, nothing like that. Tell him that I agree on the rambunctious, OK? Tell him just like that. He'll know what I mean." He waved and disappeared back into the bar.

Sam climbed in the car and got them back on the road toward the motel. Dean was leaning back against the door, head in his hands. Sam reached over and touched his leg.

Dean started up and looked at him. "I'm OK, just tired." He rubbed his eyes. "And the headache's pretty bad."

Sam made go on motions with his hands.

"I had something to do. And I wasn't going to just sit in the room, Sam, waiting for you to get back." He cleared his throat. "I wanted to know what I could do if this… well, if this didn't get better soon. I didn't hustle anyone, just shot some pool, but I could have gotten some money. And the wind noise wasn't too bad."

Sam started the car, and headed south. It wasn't that Dean wouldn't do what Sam asked, he did when it was important. And Dean almost always thought what Sam wanted was important. But Sam had left him behind, and Dean had always been a stubborn jackass. Sam knew full well that leaving Dean like that was, for all intents and purposes, handing him an engraved invitation to do just the opposite.

Sam sighed and glanced over at his brother as he pulled into the lot in front of their cottage. At least he had got him back in one piece. Dean managed to get the car door open by the time Sam came around the other side, and walked mostly under his own power into the room. Once he sat on his bed, it was if all the strings had been cut. Sam stopped his topple toward the pillows long enough to get him down to his boxers and tee, then let Dean's natural attraction to mattresses pull him flat.

Sam ordered in, and pulled Dean up and to the table when the pizza arrived. He handed Dean his prescriptions before he could take a bite. Dean was feverish and distracted, intent on pulling the toppings off his slice one by one, but he was aware enough to extract the painkiller from his palm and hand it back to Sam.

"I'm not taking another one of those, Sam. I can't string two thoughts together between them and the damn noise."

Sam was able to get a few pieces out of the box before his brother finished the pizza, eating first the slices, then all the toppings. After scraping the cheese off the bottom of the box and eating it, Dean even eyed Sam's salad as a potential meal, until Sam shoved a box of hot wings across the table. It was like throwing scraps to a lion.

After dinner, Sam powered up the laptop and Dean turned on the television and lay on the bed, flipping through channels with the volume muted. Sam got in a good couple of hours of research and was working his way through a series of articles on the island's eastern European workforce, when he heard Dean groan and mutter.

He didn't look up at first, just said, "You OK?" It took him a full second to realize what he had done. Sad and a little embarrassed, he looked over toward Dean's bed. Dean was asleep, still holding onto the remote, but moving restlessly, and talking softly. It looked like he was having a nightmare, the first one since they'd arrived here.

Sam approached the bed and kicked one of its legs until Dean started to stir. When his eyes cracked open, Sam sat down next to him and held one shoulder.

"What's the matter, Sam?"

Sam dropped a few pills in Dean's hand, and handed him a glass of water.

"Antacids, again?" Dean scrubbed his face.

Sam nodded, and let out of relieved heave of air as Dean swallowed the pills, without spotting the painkiller Sam had slipped in. He stood up and brought back the laptop, pushing Dean over so he could sit next to him, leaning back against the headboard, shoulder to shoulder.

He thought for a minute and typed: # when you went to see Russian kids #

Dean said, "Yeah, day before yesterday…" He rubbed his eyes.

Sam continued, # did you notice anything unusual #

"Uh, unusual how? I told you about how spooked they were by the storm."

# anything around the house? someone holding something? #

When Dean didn't reply right away, Sam looked up.

Dean was smiling. "Do you always move your lips while you type?"

Sam quickly typed # no #. He'd hadn't realized it but he'd been talking out loud.

He pointed at the screen again. # anything weird? #

Dean thought for a minute and rubbed his temples. "When I was leaving there was a table by the front door. They'd put bread and salt on it. Like a welcome mat, maybe? I didn't get too good a look since Milanka was pretty much pushing me off the porch by then."

# bread, salt, anything else? #

"A knife, I think. And, they had this axe on the table, blade up. Stupid sharp…"

Sam caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and turned to see Dean regarding his thumb.

Dean looked at him and yawned. "Sorry. I just barely touched the blade and it sliced right into me. I mean, who other than me sharpens an axe like that anyway?" He turned his thumb toward Sam. "The cut's pretty much healed now anyway. Just looked like some old world superstitious witchcrafty shit."

Sam typed furiously # you BLED on the old world superstitious witchcrafty shit!? #

Dean squinted at the screen. "No, Sam, I didn't. It was like a razor cut. It didn't bleed until I squeezed it."

Sam winced. # we are going back to see them tomorrow, ok? #

Dean yawned again. "Yeah, I can drive you right there. Do you have something?"

# think so, need to research more. you go to sleep, ok? #

Dean didn't reply, but turned off the TV and threw the remote onto the bedside table. He scrubbed his face. "All I'm good for anyway."

Sam tapped Dean until he looked up. He typed # not true #.

Dean frowned a little, and waved it off with a "Sure".

Sam typed # Jack said he agreed with you on rambunctious #

Dean laughed out loud but wouldn't explain the joke. Soon enough, Dean was almost asleep, his eyelids at half mast, and he didn't complain when Sam rearranged the pillows and got him lying down again under the covers.

Sam brought himself and the laptop back to the table. After a few minutes, he confirmed what he had suspected. An Ala, a Russian storm demon – in goddamn coastal North Carolina. But what the hell was it doing to Dean? He checked a few more sites before he found it. He grabbed the laptop and went back to Dean's bed, kicking the bed again until Dena's eyes opened.

"Could you quit it with the bed? I'm not going to kill you, you know."

Sam shrugged, and sat down next to Dean again, nudging him awake. He pointed at the lap top and typed # found it – it's an Ala #

Dean pushed himself up on one elbow and stared at the screen, rubbing his eyes. He squinted. "A what? An Ala? From Russia?"

Sam stared at him. And Dean called him an encyclopedia. All he typed, though, was # yes from Russia #

Dean looked up at Sam's face. "You think the kids imported us a demon?"

# pretty sure they did. are the kids unhappy? #

Dean hitched himself into a sitting position. "Probably, some of them. Milanka said they have handlers who move them around like cows … cattle. And they were packed in those houses … um, yeah, packed." He yawned and said, "But what does an Ala have 'gainst me, other than I might kill it?" He waved at his ear. "What's with the noise?"

Sam grinned and typed # I think she loves you. wants you to be her Aloviti man #

Dean was clearly struggling to stay awake. He leaned into to peer at the screen. "Aloviti –she wants me to be her … deaf boy toy or something?"

Sam could hear the repugnance in Dean's exhausted voice. # think she wants your appetite #

"Well, fuck that." Dean yawned again and blinked slowly. He licked his lips. "I'll go on a diet."

# tomorrow, we'll find her tomorrow #

Sam helped Dean back under the covers, and then went back to the table with the laptop. He was deep into his research when Dean's deep voice surprised him so much he jumped.

"Is Croatan the same thing as Croatoan?"

He looked at Dean and nodded his head yes.

Dean yawned and said quietly, "Thought so. Let's not come back here."

Sam nodded again.

* * *

When Dean woke up the next morning, Sam had once again left the room. He'd left a note, BACK WITH BRKFST, clipped to some printouts of information on the Ala and Aloviti. Dean dragged himself out of bed and scrubbed his face. He tossed the papers on the desk, and pulled the tracking device and sensor tags out of his pocket.

One tag went deep in the lining of Sam's jacket, wiggled through a tiny hole and left to rest on the left side hem. He considered for a minute, finally settling on Sam's boots as the next tag location since he'd wear those for a hunt. Dean clipped the tag to the loop of leather on the back of the left boot. He was pretty sure Sam wouldn't notice it – hell, he probably couldn't even see the back of his size 28s when he was tying them. The last two tags would have to wait until Sam got back.

Dean had finished his shower and was reading the printouts by the time Sam returned bearing 24 ounce coffees and a box of doughnuts. "We should go soon. This is about the time I found Milanka at the house, and we may need her again to get us in."

Sam nodded and stood by the door holding the car keys while Dean went through his checklist. Dean drained his coffee, slipped his gun behind his back, and walked to the door, putting one doughnut in his mouth and three more in his left hand. He had a hand free to snag the car keys from Sam, and motioned toward the closed door, which Sam opened with an eye roll.

Dean drove straight to the house, relieved that his internal GPS apparently not affected by loud noises in his ears. Or some _From Russia With Love_ fucking storm demon screwing with him. They both climbed the steps to the front porch. Dean stopped and put a hand on Sam's arm, bringing him to a stop a few feet from the door. "Sam, you knock, then step back a few feet."

Sam nodded and walked to the door. When the door opened, he watched as Sam talked, pointed at Dean, and then waited. The door closed again. Sam joined him at the rail.

"Got any cash? It cost me about forty bucks to get in the last time."

Sam pulled out his wallet, and made a show of pulling out a couple of twenties. He would know as well as Dean that they were being watched.

"Did you ask for Milanka?"

Sam nodded. Dean's closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. He felt Sam's elbow dig into his side, and looked up and around to see Milanka stepping onto the porch. He smiled and stepped forward.

"Milanka, do you remember me from a few days ago? This is my brother, Sam …" his trailed to a stop when he saw her eyes widen in alarm. He raised his hands and backed up until he felt the porch railing on his back. Sam must have said something, as she cut her eyes in his direction, and began speaking, before looking back at Dean with suspicious eyes. She pointed at him, and he couldn't tell if she was angry, or terrified, or both.

Sam reached out and touched her arm, and Dean watched with pride, as the boy turned on the spigot. He was almost glowing with sincerity, going all dewy eyed and concerned. Milanka was looking at Sam transfixed, as if the sun had just risen, until she saw the bills Sam was holding up. She snatched the money, pointed again at Dean, and waved the hand with the money in the air.

Dean said, "Do you want me to leave?"

She nodded vigorously, pointing to the stairs. Sam said a few more words to her, pointing at the porch and his brother, looking anxiously between the two.

"Don't worry, Sammy, I'll just head back to the car and wait for you." Keeping his hand on the railing, he moved toward the steps. Milanka swiveled and stepped back toward the door, never taking her eyes off him. He wasn't sure he'd ever had that affect on a woman before. Sam met him at the stairs.

Dean glanced at Milanka. She gestured and said something. He looked back at Sam and put a hand on his back. "Did she say anything about Aloviti and the Ala?"

Sam nodded.

He leaned a little against Sam, brushing his back again. "Maybe she's just more into skinny guys?"

Sam grimaced and shook his head. He grabbed his pad and wrote _PLEASE_ _WAIT BY CAR?_

Dean threw his hands up and walked down the stairs. When he reached the Impala, he turned on the tracking device, and watched as it located the tag he'd slipped on the key chain, and then the tag he'd just clipped onto Sam's jeans while they'd been up on the porch. He could see the second tag moving, probably as Milanka led Sam out to the backyard. He tucked the monitor back in his pocket and leaned against the car to wait.

The headache was starting up again, and damn if the wind noise wasn't increasing, getting more complex, and teasing him with an undercurrent of noise that almost sounded like a voice. He looked out toward the ocean.

He growled, "All right, you goddamned bitch. I can hear you. I can hear you." He scanned around him relieved that no one, including Sam, was in sight. He spoke again. "What the hell do you want? And why the hell are you doing this to me?"

The volume amped up suddenly, as did the pain, making him brace himself against the car. "I'm going to find you and burn your ass, you fucking bitch." He started to walk toward the ocean, oblivious of Sam in the house behind him, of traffic on the Beach Road, just arrowing straight for the dunes and the ocean, and toward the black clouds starting to build in the sky ahead of him.

"Bring it on, baby!" He scrambled over the dunes and sand, and stumbled out to the beach, standing in the edge of the surf. "I'll take you, goddamn it, I'll take you right now! Don't be shy, you freaking monster, just say it! Let me hear you!"

The wind hit him again, carrying a smell so strong he could almost taste it. It smelled liked earth and mud, vegetation, and something else, something he knew from the Midwest, but he couldn't place it. The wail of the wind redoubled in his ears, and still the almost words were hiding behind the noise.

He took a few steps back and held out his hands. He screamed at the sky, at the clouds, at anything that could hear him. "TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT!"

Pain cracked down from the top of his skull to the soles of his feet, arching his back. He felt himself scream again, this time in agony. He couldn't move, he couldn't fall, he was being suspended, all of his muscles cramping and spasming.

The baying of the wind changed to a single piercing note, pushing through his head, rattling around his brain. He gritted out, _"What the fuck do you want?"_

And he got his answer. A voice, reverberating through his head, making his teeth hurt, answered.

"_Serve me_."


	10. I've got your serve me right here

Sam had to stretch his legs a little to keep up with Milanka as she almost ran through the house and into the backyard. "Milanka, tell me what's going on. Why are you afraid of my brother?"

"Wait, please wait." They burst into the backyard. Sam watched as Milanka yelled at the few people in the yard, waving her arms.

"Go! Set up the table. Quick." She switched into a Slavic language and shouted something else. She turned on her heel, put her hands on her hips, and glared at Sam.

"Why did you bring him here? We do not need trouble!"

Sam looked at her a moment in surprise. This girl barely came up to his waist and yet she looked like she was going to attack him. She was fearless. No wonder Dean liked her.

"Tell me why my brother being here would be trouble."

"Aloviti. Trouble follows him now. He is not hearing, yes, deaf? She could have done more, worse to him." She took a breath to continue but Sam interrupted her.

"What the Ala did was bad enough!"

"And he will do things now, bad things." She stopped in her tirade for a moment, and eyed him speculatively. She looked away long enough to shout at a young man, who was clutching what Sam guessed were the knife, axe, bread, and salt.

The man stared at Sam wide eyed, then looked at Milanka.

"Разве это мужчина?"

"Nyet! Run!"

"где он?"

"Not here, just go!" She turned back to Sam, squinting up at him. "How do you know of the Ala?"

"That doesn't matter. One of you brought her here, called her, a few months ago. Why did she change my brother?"

"No one brought her here!"

"Someone had to, Milanka. The Ala – she should be on the plains of Russia, Serbia, Siberia … not on the coast of North Carolina. It's not the first time we've seen something like this," he said, remembering an Ethiopian crocatta in Ohio and Japanese jiang shi in Colorado. "She couldn't have crossed the ocean on her own."

"No, no one would have brought her."

Sam shouted, "But she's here!" He stopped, willing himself calm down. In a quieter tone, he said, "The only thing that matters right now is how to reverse what she did to my brother. Why did she make Dean an Aloviti? And why are you scared of him?"

"It was supposed to be stories, nothing, what you say, superstitions? Not real. But she is here. Your brother came here, asking about our friend, Gornyi. We," she swept her arms to encompass the house and yard, "we think Gornyi's family is responsible. They wanted him to come home, but Gornyi wanted to stay here. They called it, and sent it here. I'm sure of this."

"Gornyi was the man killed at the fishery, right? Why would the Ala kill him?"

Her eyes were huge. "The Ala cannot be controlled, or bought, or convinced. They are like the storm, the sea, earthquakes – like the sand moving across the beaches here. Unstoppable." She pointed toward the front door. "We put up the table to keep her from our houses. She destroys around us, but not here."

"My brother had nothing to do with this. Why would she make him an Aloviti?"

"A storm came when he was here, and the Ala saw him, and changed him. The Ala eats, and eats, taking crops, livestock, and is never full. The Aloviti man understands that. Like calls to like."

"You're serious? She did this because he eats so much? Why didn't she change Gornyi?"

"I don't know! In Serbia, the stories say the Aloviti man is a servant of the Ala. But they are not always a servant. Sometimes a rival, yes? They fight the Ala, and move storms."

"Can an Aloviti defeat an Ala? Destroy it?"

She shook her head in frustration. "I don't know. They aren't supposed to be _real!"_

Sam waited for her to continue, but her attention was focused behind him. He spun, reaching for his gun, in an unknowing imitation of Dean a few days before. And like Dean before him, Sam was stunned at how quickly a storm had formed. He'd only been there a few minutes.

Milanka turned him back to her. "I told you trouble followed him. Find your brother. She sends this storm to him. Only he can move it away and protect us."

Sam didn't hesitate. He ran back through the house, brushing the kids out of his way. He barreled through the front door, and down the steps, racing for the car. He couldn't see Dean, not in the car, not anywhere. He looked toward the ocean just as a gust of wind barreled into him, grains of sand scraping against his skin.

He popped the trunk for a towel, tying it over his nose and mouth, and opened the front door to grab and don a pair of sunglasses and pull on a jacket, zipping it up to his neck, and tying the hood tightly. He turned into the wind, braced himself against the car, and pushed off toward his brother.

* * *

It was such a relief to hear someone, something, speaking, to hear anything, he closed his eyes for a moment. He lifted his head and screamed back into the storm.

"You've got to be kidding! Serve what? Fetch and carry for a thunderstorm?"

"_Serve me."_

"Oh, I got your 'serve me' right here, bitch. I'll serve you, all right, I'll serve you a trip back to hell!"

"_Serve me or I will take more."_

The world went white around him. He reached up to his eyes and blinked against his fingers. His eyes were open – he couldn't see. "You god damned bitch, give me my sight back."

She did. He snapped his fingers near his ears, then cupped his hands over his ears and yelled. Fuck, still nothing. "Give me my hearing back!"

"_Not yet. Serve me, I will repay you. You do not serve me, I will devour."_

"Show yourself, you fucking monster. Show yourself to me."

The wind picked up, kicking up water spouts up and down the shore. Out of the maelstrom above, a towering shape began to coalesce.

It was a woman, or almost a woman, the face split in two by an immense open mouth. From her shoulders to her waist, she looked almost human, but below the waist she became sinuous and snakelike, with a trailing tail corkscrewing back into the clouds. Her body was made up of coiling gray and black clouds, shot through with lightening.

Her torso split to reveal another grotesque mouth, and both mouths began to visibly pull in air and the very clouds her body was composed off. The water spouts arched impossibly tall and thin, funneling up to the mouth in her belly. Dolphins, immense tuna, and mackerel from deep water, flashing silver and black, struggled in the current, disappearing into her immense maw, as gulls and pelicans, sea foam, beach grass, and sand began spiraling toward and disappearing into the mouth in her head.

"_You see me now."_ The face bent down toward him, mouth agape, spectral teeth and tongue grinding languidly as she chewed. _"Serve me."_

Dean backed up, craning his neck, trying to take in her size. He breathed, "Son of a bitch", before his back hit the wooden railing of steps leading back to the Beach road. She was hundreds of feet tall, almost incomprehensibly huge.

"Never gonna happen, lady, I'll never serve you."

"_You reek of need and death, hunger and nightmares, despair."_ Her nostrils flared as if she were in truth smelling him. _"It is delicious, invigorating. Know, man, that what you want, you cannot have. Serve me, and you will live past your ending."_

"I'll never serve you. I will kill you, you fucking bitch from hell. Kill you!"

"_Then I will take the thing closest to you. You will come to me because you will have no other."_

"You don't know anything about me."

"_Then I will take the one next to you."_

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and with that touch, her compulsion and the pain were gone. He dropped and staggered, turning to see who was next to him, willing it not to be Sam. He had really piss poor luck sometimes. Of course it was Sam.

Dean looked up at his brother's face and almost burst out laughing. Sam looked like a freakishly tall Bedouin. All Dean could see were his brother's eyes, round and wide, staring straight up.

"You can see her? Shit, Sam, you've got to get OUT of here!" He pushed at his brother, trying to turn him back toward the road, chancing a glance over his shoulder at the Ala. "Go, Sam, get back to the car, and drive out of here."

Sam fought back, twisting away from Dean. He was shaking his head and gestured toward the sky.

"She says she's going to take you!"

Dean watched as Sam pulled out some paper and held it up in front of him. Sam tugged the towel down to uncover his mouth, and started to read.

He grabbed Sam's biceps. "A dispersement ritual – will it work?"

Sam lips kept moving and his eyes stayed on the paper in front of him.

Dean thumped his hand on Sam's shoulder. "That's my boy!" He turned back to the Ala, and shouted, "My brother is so going to cook your ass, you fucking monster."

She laughed, a horrible sound, the sound of dead branches tapping against windows in the dead of night, the sound of the whispery scrape and rustle of dead leaves over pavement, the crack of lightening, and the roar of thunder.

Dean felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The Ala waved her arm, slowly and ponderously, to her side, and then, up, creating a fist by her face. Her voice was deep, reverberating through this head.

"_No. Now, I take him."_

"You are not getting my brother." He stepped in front of Sam, and began pushing him backwards again, toward the road. "Sam, you have to get away from her. Keep reading, but move!"

Her arms moved up and out from her sides. She threw her head back, and her scream was the sound of the wind.

Dean saw movement to either side of him. Dust devils skittered up and down the beach toward them, forming and reforming, growing larger as they approached. The wail of wind in his ears was knifing into his head again. He felt wind behind him and spun in a panic, wrapping his arms around Sam as tightly as he could.

"No, no, no, you are not going anywhere without me."

The wind was working its way between them, like fingers, pulling and pulling, using every molecule of air between them to force them apart.

He screamed at Sam, "Please say you are almost done!"

Sam shook his head turning his eyes toward Dean. It had only been a minute, Dean realized, no time to finish it. Like a living thing, the wind tore the paper out of Sam's hand, reducing the pages to confetti in seconds, the riotous wind whirling around them.

Sam's free hand and arm were caught by the wind and he was being pulled away from Dean, no matter how hard he held on. In the space of a heartbeat, Sam was torn from him, spinning out of sight in a whirl of sand and wind.

Dean turned to face the Ala. Without conscious thought, his arms raised to shoulder height side, and he closed his eyes. "Let's see how you fight, bitch."

* * *

Dean woke up with sand in his mouth and up one nostril. He shook his head and spit, cracking one eye open. The sky above him was dark, but clear blue sky was appearing behind the storm as it raced south. He got one arm under him, and was able to get up on his knees, feeling wind pulling at his short hair and slapping his over shirt against him. He brushed the sand off his face, and stood, hawking up sand.

He remembered wind, clouds and … something terrifying and electrifying at the same time. He pulled himself up and stood, his wet clothes making him shiver. The wind was still howling in his ears, but he felt good. He ran that around in his head. Just like at the park after the storm, and the same images of clouds … After the storm. The Ala. Sam.

He spun, and saw only sand, a peaceful ocean, a few gulls, and nothing else. He almost tore his pocket pulling out the locator. He held it up and turned it on, closing his eyes for a moment. He repeated 'not in the water, not in the water' before he opened his eyes, and waited for the machine to acquire a signal. And there it was – away from the water, back toward the road. He raced across the sand, climbed the steps and barreled ahead, watching the screen as he crossed the road. Sam was to the left, but still out of eyesight. How far had that bitch thrown him?

He found Sam three blocks away, out cold, shoved between two cars. It looked like he'd been dropped, or folded into place. Sam was a confusion of arms and antelope legs. Dean ran to his head and pulled off the towel in order to check his pulse, which was good and steady. He tapped Sam's cheek and called his name as he felt his arms and legs. No breaks but plenty of splinters jammed through Sam's clothes and right into his skin. Sam started to move as Dean untied the hood and unzipped the jacket to see his head more closely. Dean caught and held his brother's face.

"Gently, Sam, gently. Don't move too much, OK?" Dean leaned forward to straighten what parts of his brother he could reach, before slowly raising Sam's head and shoulders up enough for him to grab Sam under the arms, and around his chest.

"Don't worry, Sam, I'll get you up and out of here. Don't try to move. Don't move, Sam!" Sam had twitched a leg and was in danger of sliding between the car bumpers and onto the ground. Dean held on, and clambered over the cars, bringing Sam with him, until Sam was sitting, legs dangling, on the hood of one of the cars.

Dean found a bump on the back of Sam's head, and a couple of dents on the cars. When Sam had hit, he had hit hard. Dean took Sam's jacket and shook it, downwind from his brother this time, before tying it around his waist. He brought Sam's chin up enough to see in his eyes. Sam didn't look to have a concussion, but the headache was going to be fierce.

"Come on, Sam, I'm going to take you to the car. Up you go, little brother." Sam wobbled but stood, hanging onto Dean's shoulder, hard. "Can you walk or should I bring the car here?" Sam's mouth moved. "You need to show me, Sam. Nod your head for yes, shake it for no, OK?"

Sam nodded.

"Can you walk to the car?" Sam blinked at him. "Should I bring the car here?"

Sam nodded.

"OK, wait here, Princess, and I'll be right back." He helped Sam lean back until he was sitting on the car again. "Don't move!"

* * *

Translations:

"Разве это мужчина?" Is that the man?  
"где он?" Where is he?


	11. What Would Dean Do?

A/N 1: I am posting this chapter from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I'll be heading south soon to take some pictures for Merisha: a picture of the Croatia Place - Fort Raleigh on Roanoke Island, and other places of note from the story. The little turret from the buried castle at the golf course is swathed in netting and difficult to make out this trip, but pictures will be taken.

A/N 2: As before, # ... # denotes typed or texted words

* * *

Dean jogged back to the car. Before he could unlock it, Milanka was pulling at his arm, blocking him, her mouth moving, arms waving around her. She almost clipped him on the nose.

"Get out of my way, Milanka."

She obviously wanted something, but considering that Dean didn't give a good goddamn about anything other than Sam at this point, he wasn't going to spend the time to find out what right now. He pulled her arm off his sleeve, and growled at her in frustration. "I don't have time, Milanka." He slid into the car. "And I _still_ can't hear you."

He started the car, reached up to shift the car into reverse, and checked behind him. He found himself with a lapful of Russian girl, her sharp knees grinding into his thighs as she tried to climb across him. If he hadn't lifted her bodily across him, he would have had one of those knees right on the package.

He put the car in Park, turned his head and hissed through his teeth. "Get out of the car, Milanka. I don't have time for this now." Her hands were still gesturing and her mouth moving. He slid over the seat toward her, reached across her to open the passenger door, and leaned forward. He was _good_ at menacing.

"I need to get to my brother. I'll try to come back later. But if you don't get out of this car right now, the next place that get's flattened is your house. I'll bring it right to you. And I don't care about salt and axes." She clambered out and slammed the door after her. He floored it.

And the funny thing was, after this morning, he knew he was telling the god's honest truth. Aloviti really could move storms. _He_ could move storms. And wasn't that right up there with all the other impossibly weird things that had happened in his life.

He got Sam back to the motel and into their room as quickly as he could, herding him into the bathroom, before retrieving the first aid kit. Dean gently pulled out the splinters of wood tacking Sam's clothes to his body. Once Sam was down to his boxers, Dean used a pen light to check his eyes again. "How's your head? Double vision? Concussion?"

Sam touched the bump on his head gingerly and shook his head no.

"Good. I think you dented those cars with something other than your head." Dean handed him a glass of water and a pair of Vicodin. Sam looked up at him and raised his eyebrows.

"The cuts aren't so bad, but you are going to be a mass of bruises in a few hours. And it looks like I'll have to check the stitches in your arm." Sam looked at the pills again and shook his head, only to stop suddenly and rub his forehead with one hand.

Dean said, "You want one of my headache pills? 'Cause it's one or the other."

Sam took the Vicodin grudgingly.

Dean repacked the kit, and pointed Sam at the shower. "OK, brother, into the shower. I'll finish your arm out there."

Sam stood, a little unsteadily, but negotiated himself into the shower, tossing out his sodden boxers. Dean put a clean tee and pair of boxers on the sink, then moved the first aid kit into the bedroom, and brought the covers of Sam's bed down. He set up the suturing supplies and then fidgeted while he waited for Sam to finish. He hated to interrupt, since the bathroom was just about the only place either of them could claim some privacy, but after ten minutes he finally knocked on the door, and called.

"Don't wait until you get all prunified, Sam, it's not a good look." He waited another moment, then knocked again, and stepped into the bathroom. He peeked around the curtain, and found Sam, still standing, but practically asleep, his eyes closed, and leaning against the shower tiles. Dean reached in behind the curtain to turn off the water, and then passed in a towel. "you are such a wuss with painkillers. Come on, Sleeping Beauty, dry off and come out of there."

Sam emerged from the bathroom a few minutes later, damp but not dripping, and walked to the bed without too much trouble. By the time Dean had disinfected the cuts, Sam's eyes were closed. Dean helped him lie down, and picked up the needle. Sam was asleep before Dean set the first stitch in his arm.

Dean watched him sleep for a few minutes before shaking himself. That damn bitch wasn't getting another chance at his brother. He still felt good, energized, and the noise of the wind in his ears was not quiet, but bearable. He pulled Sam's duffel off the floor. He had a few things to do before Sam woke up.

* * *

Sam opened his eyes slowly. The room was dim but not bright, the sun still visible through the room window. The shower was running, and he was willing to allow that was Dean until he had confirmation otherwise. He must have slept all day. And hell, he had to take a piss. He sat up, and all at once, everything hurt. A lot. He fell back to the bed, and threw an arm over his eyes and groaned.

The shower turned off and he heard Dean moving around in the bathroom. He still couldn't bring himself to move – it was almost as if he were waiting for something. With another groan, he realized, embarrassingly enough, that he was waiting for Dean. Three years of being Dean's hunting partner, three years of taking equal risk and danger, three years of growing up, and here he was, almost twenty five, waiting for his big brother to take care of him.

He laughed to himself, 'What Would Dean Do?' He wouldn't be waiting for Sam, for one thing, like some little girl. He would get up and go straight into the bathroom, use the john, and flush. And then laugh when Sam yelped and tried to dodge away from the scalding water. His mind made up, he caught the headboard of the bed, and twisting, levered his legs off the bed and himself into a sitting position before he needed to take a break. He sat for a minute, elbows on knees, until he was brought back to himself with the warmth of a hand on the back of his neck, and the bed bouncing under him when Dean sat next to him.

"Hey, hey, you're up. You should have… hell, Sam, I'm not sure what you should have done."

Sam brought his head up in time to see his brother look at him brightly.

"How are you feeling?"

Sam opened his mouth, and then stopped, looking at Dean, who reddened.

"My fault, my fault. Yes or no questions. Do you need anything for pain?"

Sam considered and shook his head.

"Yeah, right." Dean snagged some ibuprofin off the bedside table and handed four to Sam with a glass of water. "Do you need to use the bathroom?"

Trust Dean to know that. Sam nodded. Hands reached down and steadied him until he was upright, then Dean's muscled arm was around his waist. When he stepped forward, he knew Dean would be holding him up when he needed it. In his quest to become his brother, to be the bad ass hunter, how had he forgotten, how could he have forgotten, Dean's infinite capability for compassion?

"Y'OK? Sam?"

He nodded and smiled, a genuine smile. If he was a good man, like Jess had said so many times, it was because Dean had made him that way. He was so sorry he had never told her that.

Dean got him into the bathroom, then stepped back out. "You need help, throw something … here" handing Sam a plastic cup, "throw this out the door."

Sam didn't have to throw the cup, but Dean was at his elbow, ready to help him walk to the table as soon as he stepped into the room. Sam booted up the laptop.

Dean walked to the kitchen. "Want something to eat?"

Sam nodded. He'd barely had a chance to start researching when Dean brought him a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a package of Saltines. He fell to, emptying the bowl quickly. Dean removed it to the kitchen, and came back with a two cups of coffee, one of which he dropped in front of Sam. Dean dragged the other chair in the room up next to him, and pointed at the laptop.

"Sam, we have to talk."

Sam didn't think that sounded like a good thing. He took a sip of his coffee and swallowed, then stopped and looked at the cup. It was a hazelnut latte. He opened a text box on the desktop screen, and typed: # Great coffee # He looked up at Dean, who was gazing at him intently.

"I know how to defeat this thing, Sam, and I can do it. But you have to stay here."

"What the fuck, Dean? No! I've got your back, I always have your back, and you are not going to face this thing alone!" He glared at Dean.

After a few moments, Dean waved at his ears. "Um, Sam, I don't know what you said."

Sam was so mad his eyes hurt. "Goddamn it. I won't let you face this bitch alone." He glanced down at the computer, but before he could type, Dean was holding his arm.

"I get that you don't think that's a good idea." Dean took a gulp of his coffee, and Sam echoed him. "But you need to understand, I can't let you come with me."

When Sam opened his mouth, Dean held up a finger in warning.

"Drink your coffee and listen to me. I have to do this alone. The Ala said she would use you to get me to turn. I won't let that happen." Dean took a swallow of coffee, and again, Sam followed suit.

He typed # More reason for me to come with you. She won't take me. #

"She already did, and she's not getting a second chance. And you're beat to hell. I'll move quicker if you aren't with me."

Sam furiously typed, # like I haven't made allowances for you before!! # God, he was so sick of this. He wanted Dean to hear him yelling.

Dean read the screen and grinned. "Good point. You have. But you probably wished I had stayed in bed?"

Sam nodded in reluctant agreement, and surprised himself by yawning. He stretched a little to wake up, and typed # I'm still coming. You need me there to pick up the pieces #. His fingers felt funny.

"You might be right. Finish your coffee. If you won't stay here, you'll need the caffeine to stay awake." Dean took a few steps to his bed and brought back a sheaf of papers. "I found the dispersement spell, and a ritual that should bind her. I picked up what I needed today while you were asleep."

Sam finished his coffee, blinking at the laptop. He found himself yawning again. He typed # let's go then # and stood up. The room tilted to one side, and he suddenly felt very heavy. He took a stumbling step forward but before he could fall, Dean was there, as he always was, helping him to his bed. He felt Dean's hand lift his chin, until he was looking into Dean's eyes.

"I'm going to call her to me, Sam. There's a lighthouse on the west side of the road, north of Avon." Dean tapped his check. "Sam, you following? I need you to concentrate for a minute. Can you do that?"

Sam nodded and gave himself a shake but he was couldn't hold his head up. He was really tired.

"OK, Sam, remember, lighthouse, north of Avon, sound side. Come there as soon as you wake up. You hear me, Sam, come to the lighthouse. I'll write it down for you too. Got me?"

Sam tried to nod. "Why do I haf't'go … lighthouse, Dean?" The room was getting dark. He opened his eyes a moment later and found himself laying down, Dean's hand warm on the back of his neck, and a pillow under his head.

"I'll see you in a few hours, Sammy. And, don't be mad."

Sam turned his head on the pillow and felt his awareness slip away.

* * *

The hardest part of the plan had been figuring out what to use for "Ala's herbs". That part had also taken the longest, since he'd had to spend time back on the mainland looking for weeds growing in a plowed field. Picking his way over the edge of the furrows, he breathed in the odors of moist earth and decomposing plants, and with a start, recognized the smell that had been so familiar just before the storms hit. Lore said Alas lived in the turning of the plow, so picking plants at the ends of the plowed rows was going to be the most effective. The easiest part of the preparation was finding the sleeping pills wrapped up in Sam's briefs a week ago. Dean had to laugh. What was Sam thinking? He had always known all of the places Sam hid things. When they were little, and had to move in a hurry, Dad never gave him enough time to help Sam remember all of his hiding places, so Dean had picked them out for Sam.

He scrubbed his hair. Man, this was just going to be icing on the piss-off-Sam cake. Maybe, if he was lucky, this would be one of the times Sam would get so mad he would actually be speechless for a few minutes. Dean checked his watch. He should have a clear five hour window before King Kong back at the motel was awake enough to come and find him. Dean frowned a little. He really hoped there was something to find, besides the stolen car, when Sam got there.

As he drove south, the car's headlights picked out sand skittering across the road, the wind pushing the grains off one dune and onto another. He wondered if he was like that, losing cells in drifts and heaps in all the motels, apartments, and abandoned buildings they'd stayed in. He glanced down at the upholstery. There would be a lot of him in here. Maybe that's what had been happening to him this year. Not just cells, but all of him, whittled away, grain by grain. Sometimes he felt there was so little left he was transparent.

Hell, he was doing it again – all this goddamn introspection was going to eat him alive. He needed to leave the moody, broody, and bitchy to Sam, and just hunt.

It was with a real sense of relief that he spotted the top of the lighthouse, just visible over a huge dune. It was set back about a quarter mile from the road, and in the middle of nothing but sand, water, and scrub brush. He turned into the access road and drove a short distance to the gate, and parked the stolen car near the fence. He wasn't going to let his baby any closer to the action than he was going to let Sam. Fifty miles away for both of them should be good. Tomorrow was a Sunday, he was pretty sure, so Sam should be the first person here in the morning. If this worked, he would be standing at the gate, waiting for Sam. And he'd hear the Impala coming. That would be sweet.

He collected his duffel, climbed the fence, and hiked down the rutted dirt road to the lighthouse. The night was cool and clear, the sky free of clouds, a three quarter moon providing enough light to walk steadily on the uneven access road. When he reached the lighthouse, he paced out a circle between the building and the water, marking the edges in flour and the plants he'd collected that day – limp stalks of thistle, assorted weeds, and the trailings of hay blown into the furrows in the field. He set out plates of grain, fish, meat, and fruit at the ordinal points, finally drawing a smaller interior circle with ash. He stood back, checking the lines, and cocked an eye at the sky overhead, relieved to see it still clear.

He pulled out the summoning ritual. This should bring her, and the circle would bind her. He took a breath, and began. Clouds began forming almost immediately. He spoke the ritual again, and then again, as lightening began arcing across the sky, then slammed down to the earth all around him. He saw sparks overhead, and spun, to see the top of the lighthouse in flames. Hail started to fall. He shouted the ritual a fourth and final time, and looked down to see that the symbol was untouched by the storm, the vegetation, flour, and ash stuck in formation as if with glue. As he watched, the plates emptied. She was here.

The wind wailed in his ears, warbling and frantic, grinding into his head so loudly he screamed in pain, instinctively and futilely covering his ears. A shape began to form in the inner circle, cloudy and indistinct at first, but gradually becoming clearer. The first thing he made out were slitted venomous eyes, a snake-like head, and a coiled, sinuous body.

The howling in his head dropped in intensity and twisted into words. _"I thank you for the offerings. Are you now ready to serve me?"_

"No. I'm ready to send your ass back to hell, you fucking bitch."

She flicked a forked tongue at him, as feminine arms formed at her sides. _"You WILL serve me."_

"Can the shapeshifter crap." He checked his paper one more time, and then crouched by the outside circle. "I've bound you to the earth." He shook holy water into the circle. "I bind you now with water." He lit a make shift torch, the kerosene soaked rag flaming above his head, and threw that into the inner circle with her. It dropped through her insubstantial body to burn on the ground. "I bind you now with fire." Salt followed. "With salt." He bound her with sugar, grain, milk, fish, meat, and fruit, tossing each ingredient into the inner circle. With a flick of his wrist, he doused her with vodka. "With fermented drink."

He stood up. She looked almost solid now, jerking from side to side of the circle, seeking a way out. He had a stomach turning flashback to Meg's chair, scraping across the floor at Bobby's.

"_What have you done?"_

He didn't answer, just began reciting the dispersement spell he'd committed to memory.

She began to laugh. _"No one can bind the air. Will you fight me, again, for the life of your brother?"_

She threw her head back and raised her arms over her head, screaming. Her form lost cohesion as drifts and streamers of sand and dust began swirling upward, faster and faster.

Well, crap. That didn't go like he hoped it would. Sam always did have better luck with these things, anyway. But there was one thing Sam couldn't do. Dean could deliver the dispersement spell in person.

He yelled, "Bring it on, Bitch Goddess!", threw his head back, closed his eyes, and stretched out his arms out. He followed her.


	12. He could pound Dean into pulp today

In the morning, Sam found the bottle of Flurazepam, in plain sight, right by the coffee maker. He'd been partially awake for what felt like forever, staring at the framed scene of the ocean on the wall. Dean's Mexican beach, he realized, only after an eternity of rising and falling through overlapped layers of surreal dreams of hammocks, thunderstorms, and inexplicably, the 'toon cast of _Who Framed Roger Rabbit_. The third time he'd been going down on Jessica Rabbit, and muzzily thinking that all Jessica's were volcanically hot, she started to sound grotesquely like Bela Talbot, and with that, he came to with a start, as if a rubber band had snapped him in the head.

He rubbed his head. It was morning? He didn't even remember going to bed. He staggered toward the dollhouse kitchen, making a determined, but slightly weaving, beeline for the coffee maker. On the way, he picked up the note Dean had left, tented on top of the laptop. Staring slightly cross eyed at the note, he read it, and then read it again. He could hear the blood rushing in head, his ears were turning red … and he didn't even flinch when he heard a sharp crack. He looked down at the broken drug bottle, and watched pills drop out to plink on the floor and the counter. He hadn't even noticed he was holding the bottle, and here he'd crushed it in his hand.

In a couple of months, when this whole deal thing was safely behind them, he was so going to punch his brother right on the nose. It wasn't until he'd scrubbed his face with cold water, and struggled into clothes, and jammed his feet into his boots, that he realized he didn't have to wait until after the deal. He could pound Dean into pulp _today_. And he would, just as soon as he found his stupid, bull headed, maniacal brother. He felt something on the tab of his boot. To his surprise, he found and detached a tiny electronic device. What the hell? He slapped his hands over his clothes and found another tag attached to a belt loop on the back his jeans. What the hell was Dean up to?

Stuffing his wallet and the devices in his back pocket, he thumbed Dean's speed dial for the fifth time, listening in mounting frustration as this call also went straight to voice mail. He might need to wait to punch Dean until tomorrow. He ran out the door, and practically went face first onto the hood of the Impala. He backpedaled, and accidentally slammed his bandaged arm into the doorframe. Hissing, he stepped back into the room and saw Dean's key ring on the table next to the laptop.

Goddamn it. He looked at the note again, written in Dean's block printing:

_Lighthouse on the west side of the road, five miles north of Avon. Left my valuables here just in case. -- D  
PS - West is the right side of the road when you are driving south._

He grabbed the keys, bolted from the room, and into the car, skidding the Impala onto Beach Road, heading south. So now he was a 'valuable'? How could Dean leave him? Jesus. Dean _left_ him. _Dean_ left _him_. How fucking ironic. He hit the steering wheel so hard he could already hear Dean yelling at him. Dean wasn't allowed to leave, not now, not with the deal, not ever. Sam had made that perfectly clear. He gunned the car again, almost slewing the car off the road as he ran a light, turned onto the bridge, and barreled south to Avon.

He glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw light reflecting off the roof of a car behind him. His stomach dropped right through the floor of the car. He took his foot off the gas, hard pressed not to hit the brakes, chanting silently, don't be a police car, please not a police car, please, please, please, don't be a police car, as he let the Impala's weight slow her down. As the road started to flatten out, he got a better look at the car and blew out a huge sigh of relief. Not a cop.

He drove carefully for the next fifty miles, which meant he wasn't going to get a speeding ticket, but gave him far too much time to conjure up more and more gruesome scenarios of what he might find when he arrived. He could see the lighthouse long before he reached the access road, and timed his arrival to allow the traffic to clear before swinging onto the dirt road. He was going so fast as he went around a dog leg in the road, he almost couldn't stop the Impala from running into a heavy gate. He spotted an old Camry a few feet from the fence, tucked into some brush.

Both cars were hidden by the turn, and he, himself, would be hidden from the road as soon as he topped the first dune a hundred yards out. Sam grabbed the first aid kit by its strap, and vaulted the gate. He ran toward the lighthouse, letting his long legs fly over the ground, trying to stretch out the soreness in his muscles as he ran.

The sky was a clear blue as far as he could see. The dunes undulated in waves as they always did, and the luxurious tufted beach grass and scrub brush looked undisturbed. Still, something felt off. He checked the sky again - there were no birds anywhere.

He reached the lighthouse after cresting a final hill, and stopped abruptly. Everywhere he looked, the vegetation was gone, like it had been scrubbed off the sand with an eraser. The dunes looked more like plateaus, flat topped and sharp sided.

He ran to the edge of the water looking for a sign of his brother. He ran down the beach south, then north. He held his breath when he spotted a floating mass of seaweed, large enough and dark enough to resemble a floating body. He headed back to the lighthouse, not sure how he would find Dean in all this sand without a metal detector.

He almost stumbled over a circle of dead plants. He picked up a stalk of hay or straw, and rubbed it between his fingers. White powder stuck to his sweat-slicked fingers. He sniffed it, then tentatively tasted it. Flour. There was a blackened inner circle. He spotted the corner of Dean's duffel, and dragged it out from under what must have been a foot of sand. He broke the zipper in his haste to open the duffel and get the entrenching tool. He scanned the area around him, glad he didn't have to watch what he was doing, his practiced hands unfolding and locking the handle sections into place as they had thousands of times. The feeling of nostalgia that washed over him was so sudden and so sharp, he almost sat down.

Now, holding a serviceable shovel, he circled the lighthouse, moving further out on each lap. Every time he was on the side facing the water, he had to take a breath and steel himself, before he could look out over the sound again and check for a floating body. Then, thank God, he caught a wink of light back in the dunes, and ran headlong toward it.

Dean's hand was palm up, his silver ring glinting in the sun, just visible under … a boogie board? Dropping the shovel, and hands shaking, Sam reached for the board, and with a quick twist, sailed it toward the water. He fell on his knees next to his brother. Most of Dean's left side was buried in sand, but his head and face were clear. Dean looked almost gray in the morning light. Sam reached for Dean's neck, praying for a pulse, and found one.

He got his arms under Dean's and heaved, groaning as all the bruising from yesterday's car dive lit up in pain, sparking through his arms and shoulders. Dean's lax body slid from under the sand, offering just a little resistance, and Sam dragged him to a clear space, and gently laid him back down. He tapped Dean's cheek, and when that got no response, Sam rubbed his knuckles down Dean's sternum. He lifted Dean's eyelids to see just the white sclera, just like he had at the park. He'd been expecting that, but he still hated it.

He found a little blood on the right front of Dean's shirt, and pulled up the tee to see a splinter of drift wood. He tugged on it experimentally, but it didn't shift. He decided to wait to remove it until he had Dean safe back at the motel. He carefully shifted Dean up on one side, and felt his stomach grow queasy. He'd thought Dean wasn't lying flat because there was a slight rise in the sand underneath him. It wasn't sand, it was a piece of driftwood, stuck in Dean's back, holding his right side off the ground a few inches. The wood was slick with blood.

Jesus. The splinter he found in front was the other end of this stick, skewering him back to front, right through his side. And he'd dragged Dean on his back, grinding and shifting the wood. And Dean had been laying on it, his body weight probably pushing it further in … Jesus. He scrambled up, breathing heavily, willing himself not to be sick.

He pulled rolls of bandages from the first aid kit and wrapped Dean's chest tightly to secure the wood in place. He watched Dean carefully, hoping to see any sign of returning consciousness, but he was out cold. Sam crammed the kit and the entrenching tool into Dean's ruined duffel, and slung it over his head and shoulder, before bending down and carefully lifting Dean, one arm under his shoulders, and the other behind his knees.

The walk to the road was grueling. Sam desperately wanted to stretch his arms out about half way back, but he couldn't bring himself to set his brother down long enough to adjust his position. He set his teeth and willed his sore muscles to behave. One of Dean's legs started to swing as he walked, each step knocking a boot gently into Sam's thigh.

He crested a dune, and let out a huge sigh of relief when he saw the Impala. He stopped for a moment to breathe, before gently repositioning his arms so that Dean's head rolled back against his shoulder. One of Dean's arms was jostled loose, and slipped down limply. Sam carefully picked his way down the hill and back to the car, not aware of much beyond the sound of his own breathing, his exhaustion, and the pain in his arms and shoulders.

On the way north to the hospital, he drove the Impala as fast as the road would allow, the engine roaring, blowing past cars as if they were standing still. Dean was on his stomach, a pillow cushioning his right side, and his head on a pillow in Sam's lap. He still hadn't moved on his own. There wasn't any lore about what happened to Aloviti's if they fought back. Sam snorted – probably because no Ala had been chuckleheaded enough to select anyone anything like Dean.

He called ahead to the hospital. There was a team waiting for him at the ER entrance, talking to him, and at him, in soft southern accents, slipping Dean onto a gurney, and wheeling him out of sight.

It was almost six hours before he was allowed to see his brother.

The first thing he heard was the wind. The wind in his head, in his ears, still enveloping him, dampening reality, taking the world from him. It soughed, and sighed, and slipped through his head, familiar, rhythmic, soft and loud. He thought he was still in the air, and dove toward the dark ground, dropping away from the sky.

He became aware of touch next, something touching him. Water on his face. He tried to move away. There was noise around him but the wind was so much softer. It was making a noise like … a clock? The touch went away. He heard a voice weaving in and around the sound. He felt something on his arm, heavy, warm, then felt something rubbing his palm. At least he could still feel. There was the voice again. It said, 'Dean'.

He had to open his eyes. He had to see if that bitch had survived, and come back. He struggled, trying to move something, his head, his eyelids, open his mouth, anything. He heard a grunt, and felt it, and another, in his ears and in his throat. He was making that noise.

"Dean? Can you hear me? Please, please hear me."

Sam, he could hear Sam. Giant, wonky, shaggy dog, Sam. There was something he could do, he knew it. He felt his mouth turn up.

"Dean? You're smiling. You _can_ hear me."

He drank in every sound, Sam breathing, moving, a chair scraping. Sam was talking to someone, but he couldn't make out the words. He could hear. And suddenly, he could feel pain. He gasped for air, then again.

Sam was back, holding his shoulder. "Breathe, Dean, breathe. The nurse is giving you some morphine."

He couldn't breathe, the pain was like fireworks going off in his back, all through him. Sam grabbed his hand.

"I'm going to count, Dean, count with me. Listen to me, Dean. Count. By the time we get to ten, you'll feel better. One. Can you say one?" Sam didn't wait, he just kept counting. "Two, three, breathe slowly Dean, four, deep breaths, five, that's it, relax … "

Dean felt warmth spread up from his arm. Felt his muscles relax with seven. He felt Sam's hand holding his. He squeezed when Sam said eight. Again on nine. He fell asleep before Sam said anything else.

He opened his eyes. The room moved lazily around him, tilting as he moved his eyes. Noise. Pressure, warmth, cotton in his head … morphine. Sam said that, he was pretty sure. He turned his head against the pillow. Hospital. Curtain. Turned his head the other way. Windows. And Sam. Head back, mouth hanging open, snoring. He breathed out a laugh.

"Sam." He voice sounded like shit, but man, he could _hear_ it and he felt great. Wonderful morphine. And hospitals. Hospitals gave you morphine. He loved hospitals, they were fucking fantastic. Until food arrived. He worked his jaw, and sucked his teeth, trying to work up some saliva. "Sam." He cleared his throat. "Sam, wake up."

Sam's left knee bounced. Dean watched him through a haze of delight. Sam was so stupendously tall. It was like hitting the tail of a dinosaur. He could see the signal's progress as it slowly worked its way up the gigantic reptilian body toward Sam's enormous scaly brain. Sam twisted a little bit in the chair, moving his arm away from his body. Next, a deeper breath, the dinosaur's enormous lungs sucking in enough air to empty the room. Down the arms next, a finger and thumb moving on Sam's left hand.

Dean laughed out loud when Sam finally jerked and brought his head up with a groan. Dean was laughing so hard, he started to cough, rocking himself forward. His right hand pressed against his side, his breath starting to hitch. Sam bent in half and rocketed out the chair, running around the bed. Dean squeezed his eyes shut, hissing.

"Here, Dean, I just hit the button. You'll feel better in a minute."

He drew air past his clenched teeth until the pain receded. Fanfuckingtastic hospitals. "Sam."

"Right here, Dean." Sam brought the head of the bed up, and helped him drink some water.

He opened his eyes. "I can hear you."

" Yeah."

"Say something dirty."

"What? Dean, are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Come on, say something naughty, say a ... bad word. Curse." Things were getting floaty again. He moved his head until he could see Sam. "Just one word, loud. Like you stubbed your toe." He licked his lips. "Please, Sam, you sound just like Dad when you swear. I really missed it."

Sam's mouth opened and closed a few times. He walked past the curtain, disappearing for a minute. "OK, Dean, I closed the door." He shook his head and looked at Dean. "You want the Dad special. Long or short?"

Oh, goddamn it, Sam was going all earnest again. Dean grinned. "Long."

Sam's expression, his furtive looks back toward the hall, and the rising blush on his cheeks as he growled out a series of words more than Dad worthy, were enough to reduce Dean to helpless laughter, tears rolling down his cheeks.

When he'd finished, Sam grinned and said, with a knowing look and a wink, "So, was it good for you, too?"

Dean let his head fall back and howled.

Sam surfed for a couple of hours and he found a very promising hunt. When Dean was out in few days, they would drive up north to Erie, Pennsylvania. After all, with a name like Erie, there had to be _something_ supernatural there. And if it was what he thought it might be … he needed to check Dad's journal before he was sure.

He stopped to look out the window and heard something. He turned toward Dean suddenly. There is was – the tiny click in Dean's breathing left over from having his nose broken, along with most of his face, after being smashed into a wall by a poltergeist when he was thirteen. Dean had no idea he made the noise, and Sam would never tell him. He didn't think even Dad knew. He hadn't noticed it for a while – but that might have been because he'd been too busy, or pissed, or stupidly busy to listen for it.

So much of their lives had been change and upset, disappointment and heartbreak, but the one constant, the one thing he could bet his life on, was Dean. Dean sleeping in the same room, or the same bed when they were little, Dean falling asleep after helping Sam deal with a nightmare, was such a constant of his childhood that just one noise, that little click, meant 'home' in the dark, sometimes when nothing else did. He thought sometimes that that would be the thing he would miss the most fiercely when Dean died.

He settled into wait for Dean to wake up again.

* * *

A/N: This penultimate chapter is also being posted from the Outer Banks. I'm heading home to Virginia today. The final chapter will be up on Tuesday.

A/N 2: Terry - you'd better not come out from behind the couch until you post Chapter 2 of my story. And maybe Chapter 3. Get cracking!


	13. His brother had lojacked him

Disclaimer – I've never owned anything Supernatural. Supernatural belongs to Kripke and the CW.

A/N: Thanks so much to everyone who read, reviewed, and alerted this story. I was stunned at the response. For those of you who did all those things and didn't review, I really hope you'll take a moment to review the story now and tell me what you liked best. Thanks!

* * *

Dean was asleep when they brought in his effects – in the rush to surgery, his clothes and the contents of his pockets had gone astray for two days. Sam dumped out the bag and checked off ring, necklace, bracelet, wallet, paperclips, a couple of wads of paper, and _his_ EMF meter. He signed for everything, and was once again alone in the room with his brother.

He glanced at the EMF meter and picked it up, flipping it over. Not an EMF. There was a manufacturer's name and the word Security printed on the cover. He found a switch and thumbed the thing on, watching as a tiny screen displayed a start up menu, before settling to a grid pattern. He scratched his nose. Huh.

He set it on the window ledge, and started to unfold and examine the papers Dean had in his pockets. The box suddenly let out a piercing shriek, and small lights started to flash. He picked it up warily, and almost dropped it again when it suddenly let out four more bursts of noise. Dean shifted restlessly in his bed.

Sam stared at the screen, and read 'Targets Acquired: 4'. He worked through the papers until he found a receipt for a 'child locator' from Radio Shack. He smiled when he saw Jack's name and phone number written on the reverse. He pulled out the electronic widget he'd taken off his boot earlier. His brother had lo-jacked him. He huffed out a laugh. That must be what Jack meant about rambunctious. He turned off the machine before it could squawk again.

Dean stirred again, muttering, and Sam walked to the head of the bed. He put his hand on Dean's shoulder, waiting to see if Dean would wake up. It had been less than forty-eight hours since the surgery, and he was on IV morphine. Which was good and bad, Sam had decided some time ago. Bad since Dean slept like a log on the drug, but good because when he did wake up, his usual guards were down, and he would say some of the most outrageous things.

Hell, it if hadn't been for morphine, he wouldn't know squat about his brother's life when he'd been at Stanford. He wouldn't know about Florida. He wouldn't be asked to swear like Dad. And he wouldn't have missed either for the world.

Dean's eyes cracked open, and Sam waited until they had centered on him.

"Glad to see you awake."

"Hey, Sam." Dean pursed his lips, and squinched up his eyes a little bit, before he said, "How 'ong?

Sam hit the button to raise the head of the bed up. "You've been here for two days."

Dean was looking at him intently. "You 'k?"

"I'm fine, Dean, really. The stitches are out of my arm. I'm still a little bruised, but doing really well."

Dean shifted a little bit and grimaced. "Why'm I here?"

Sam handed him the on-demand control for the morphine drip. "Here. Push this if it get's bad OK?"

Dean eyed it, and let out a sigh. "Morphine. Painkiller of … something." He closed his eyes and Sam thought he'd gone back to sleep. "Wha' happened?" Dean opened his eyes and carefully touched his side.

"I found you near the lighthouse. You had a piece of driftwood right through you." He heard Dean humming in the back of his throat. He picked up the control and hit the button. "You're supposed to hit the button if it's bad."

Dean looked at Sam. "I know that. I was, um…" he blinked lazily, "trying to hear myself."

"Oh, sorry, I gave you morphine."

Dean smiled at him. "'S'awright. Hummin' 'cause it hurt." He licked his lips and Sam helped him take a drink of water.

"You hungry? I've got lime jello here." He held up a spoon, and moved it toward Dean's mouth. "It's your favorite." Dean shook his head. Sam persevered. "It's also about the only thing besides applesauce and yogurt you can have now."

"I got stuck?"

"Yep, with driftwood. The doctor's said it had to be moving at hurricane speed to skewer you." Sam looked down at his hands, then back up at Dean. "It nicked your intestines, but missed your lumbar nerve." Sam eyed the metal stand holding several bags. "You're on morphine, which you know, fluids, antibiotics, and you've had two units of blood."

"Good. I like lotsa stuff." He brought up his arms, trailing tubing, and rubbed the heel of his palms into his eyes. "Can't believe I got run through with a piece of shit decoration."

"It's what you get for trying to run off to join the demon circus all by yourself."

"Yeah, brought down the big top." Dean frowned. "Still mad?"

Sam shrugged. "Yeah. But not so much right now. Wait 'til next week when I break your nose."

Dean huffed and smiled again. "Like you'd get a chance."

"You won't be able to find the sleeping pills next time."

Dean grunted and rolled his head to one side. "Tell me story."

Sam laughed. "As long as it's not X rated."

"Tell me 'bout demon. Why deaf?"

"If an Ala catches someone at a crossroads at dusk, she can make them deaf, blind, or mute. That's what happened at Jockey's Ridge. She could have done all three."

"Lucky just deaf, tha's whacher saying?"

Sam didn't reply.

"Pretty piss poor crossroads, you ask me. Fuckin' demon."

"She was probably pretty desperate. Alas, or Ale…" He saw Dean roll his eyes. "The plural is Ale, not Alas, Dean."

Dean snickered. "Sure, Boris, whatever you say."

Sam frowned at him. "An Ala is a demon of farmland. They devour and consume. They can eat the crops of an entire village with one storm. This area has almost nothing she's used to. That's probably why she was going after flowers, and fish."

"So, she only picked me because she was hard up?" He waved a hand at Sam. "Can't be right. Just 'cause you never get any, doesn't mean she didn't want me." He yawned, and winced.

"Can you tell me what happened? What you saw? What was it like?"

"Gimme jello."

Sam helped him finish the container, and then asked again. "What was it like, Dean, fighting her? Moving the storms?"

"Superhero. Like bein' a superhero. Flying above the ground." He swooped his hand around. "I wasn't scared once." He looked at Sam with his eyebrows up. "Prolly 'cause I wasn't really flying, just thinking I was there … hard to explain. And it wasn't even like fighting fighting, you know, more pushing stuff with your head … thoughts, something. I had to look at things funny. _You_ know."

Sam nodded, "All I ever moved was a piece of furniture. You manipulated air molecules, directed wind – how did learn to do that?"

"Must've been the Aloviti whammy. Could just do it. Like a superhero. It was amazing." Dean looked out the window, his eyes losing focus. "Don't remember the wood, though. Lighthouse was on fire … "

"Alovitis go into a trance to move storms. You were probably too far into it to notice. As soon as you beat the Ala, you must have passed out for real." Dean didn't reply immediately. After a minute, Sam touched his arm. "I didn't think there were any deaf superheros."

That brought Dean's attention back to him. "Sure, there are. Must be. One, at least. Girl, named Echo, pretty sure."

"Really. So you were like a girl superhero?" The blank look on Dean's face was priceless. Sam knew his brother would eventually work through it, he just wasn't sure how fast. He started to laugh. "What, Goofy?"

"I am _not_ a chick superhero." He frowned at Sam when he laughed again. "Not a chick." Dean pointed at Sam. "Wasn't like one. I was like … deaf Batman." His arm dropped to his side, hitting the surgery site. Sam winced in sympathy when Dean hissed in pain.

"I know you were, Dean, you were the best superhero ever." He watched Dean close his eyes but he didn't see him relax. "Hit the button, dude. I'll be here when you wake up."

* * *

Sam brought him back to the Seaside Cottages four days later. Dean suggested they just leave, and let him recover in the car, but before he could finish marshalling his arguments, he fell asleep. Sam, the little bitch, took that as a win, and extended their stay two more nights.

"Why do you want to stay here, Sam?"'

"You mean here in the dollhouse, or here in general?"

"Don't be pissy, Sam. You spoke to Ernie, right? We're clear. And I don't want to give Pinching Priscilla in the office a bad credit card even if I do have a bruise on my ass."

"Ernie's got the hotel bill covered. And the hospital stay. I want us to see Milanka again."

Dean nodded. "Oh. Yeah. I sort of told her I'd come back to talk to her."

Sam nodded, thinking the point won.

"I also told her that I would huff and puff and blow her house down." He caught Sam staring at him. "She pissed me off, Sam. Climbed in the car without a by your leave." When Sam didn't reply, Dean continued. "What else, Brainiac?"

"I also want to see the Wright Brothers' Memorial. You should be up for that day after tomorrow. We'll do that on the way out of town."

"I love it when you take charge like this, Sam. Makes me all tingly."

"Pretty sure that's the prescriptions they gave you. Speaking of, you're due for a dose of everything, and a nap." Sam pointed at Dean's bed.

"The power trip is going to your head. I don't need a nap, that's all I've done since I got here." He did his best to quell a yawn, but finally gave in, his mouth opening so wide he could have sworn his jaw cracked. "Don't say anything. I will lie upon the bed and watch the television – awake the whole time."

He accepted pills from Sam and swallowed them. "Wide awake. No sleeping." He turned on the television, poking at the buttons until he turned off the closed captioning. "Hey, _Men in Black_."

A few minutes later, Sam was pulling the covers over him. "Ah hell, the Flur, flurry, pan ... pills. I left them out."

"I take care of my valuables too, bro. I'll see you in the morning."

The next day, Sam wanted to go back to the beach, and dragged Dean with him. While Sam was in the water, Dean walked up and down the shore, barefoot, and his jeans hiked up to his knees. He found a bench and leaned back, letting the sun take the chill out of the ocean breeze. Sam woke him some time later by leaning over and dripping salt water onto his face. Dean took him back to clean up before driving them back to Kill Devil Hills.

Milanka was reluctant to meet them at first, peeking around the door warily at Dean, but between Sam's emo and her housemates' whispering, she stepped out after a few minutes. She looked at Sam appraisingly, but addressed herself to Dean.

"You can hear me now?" When he nodded, she asked, "Why are you here, Aloviti?"

"Not an Aloviti anymore, Milanka. The Ala is gone."

Her eyes widened. "Gone for ever? Or back to Serbia?"

Sam looked at Dean expectantly, the question apparently surprised him a little as well.

"Gone forever, should be. I banished her." He looked up, reciting the dispersement in his head. "I sent her 'into the mountain cloud, where no rooster crows, where no dog barks, where no cows bellow, where no sheep bleat' … lots of farm animal stuff. She won't be going back to Serbia or anywhere else."

Milanka was still watching them carefully, but she squared her shoulders, and smiled. "We are all grateful. Do you want to come in?"

They were treated to lunch, smoking hot sausages and potatoes taken straight from the grill and dropped onto their plates. Dean was sprawled back on a chair, sucking his burned fingers, while Sam talked to a group of kids about their lives in the US. He looked up at the expanse of blue sky overhead, and found himself gazing at the single cottony cloud in the sky. He thought about what he'd done. No more digging graves in the rain would be great. He smiled to himself before quirking an eyebrow and telling the little cloud to move left. It was so ridiculous, he huffed out a laugh, and chuckled until the cloud _moved_. To the left.

Just coincidence. That's all it was and all it was ever going to be ... before he could try again, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

Milanka set up a chair right next to him and sat down.

He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry if I scared you, that time in the car."

She nodded, but continued to gaze at him with wide brown eyes.

"I wouldn't really have blown this place apart." He motioned with his arms, encompassing the houses and the back yard. "I just had to get back to Sam. He'd been hurt." His eyes involuntarily turned to his brother, confirming that he was still not in any danger.

"By you?"

"What the hell?" He was on his feet glaring at her, one hand pressing against his back. He gritted his teeth, and didn't yell when he replied. "By me? Is that why you got in the car? You thought I'd hurt my own brother?"

She'd leaned back in the chair, making herself smaller, but answered, hissing the words out in a half whisper. "Yes. Aloviti are as dangerous as any Ala. They aren't human. You could have done anything to him, or to all of us."

"No, Milanka, I _couldn't_ have. Not to Sam. Not to you. Not to anyone."

Sam walked up and stood by him. "You about ready to go?"

Dean nodded.

Milanka stood up with him, and smiled. It transformed her face. "Are you going to be here long? I'm off tomorrow night. And I have a friend who would like to go out with you, Sam."

"Sorry to miss that, but we're leaving tomorrow."

* * *

Sam drove them back to Bob's for dinner that night. They took the same booth as before, and welcomed Ernie to the table when he joined them a few minutes later. Dean ordered an immense platter of fried seafood, heaped with onion rings, hushpuppies, and french fries.

When Dean finally started to hesitate over his next bite, Sam nudged him. "This is your diet?"

Dean looked at him innocently. "Fish is good for you, Sammy."

Sam looked up at Ernie apologetically, shrugging. "He's a growing boy."

Ernie laughed, thanked them both again, and pressed a roll of bills into Dean's hand. They both tried to refuse, but half-heartedly at best. "Look, boys, it's a thank you from some of us in the real estate business here. You saved our hineys. This is the least we can do."

Sam gave Ernie his cell phone number to add to Dean's, not because Dean's wasn't going to be available in a few weeks, just … so that he would have it. Ernie clapped them both on the shoulder, and left the restaurant.

Before they left, Sam did as Dean had suggested that first night, and walked back to check the ceiling in the corner. He barked out a laugh just as Dean came up next to him. Dean handed him a magic marker.

Sam stretched his arm up and shook his head. He added his signature under John and Dean's on a tee shirt that read 'Winchester Pest Removal Service, Inc.' He thought for a minute and carefully printed an addition, 'A Family Tradition since 1983'.

As they left the restaurant Sam said, "Wright Brothers tomorrow, then up to Erie. All right with you?"

Dean's head came up, and he looked at Sam seriously. "More deal research? Another professor?"

Sam smiled briefly. "Something like that."

Dean grinned back at him. "Anything further away from Florida is fine with me, Sam."

* * *

Notes:

The buried golf course is real, as is the single turret visible above the sand. Bob's Grill's is real, and its motto: "Eat and Get the Hell Out" is very real. The young restaurant workers from Eastern Europe - Serbia, Bulgaria, etc., are also real. Harley's Biker Bar, however, is not.

One alert reviewer, Moe, pointed out that I'd moved Kill Devil Hills north of Kitty Hawk in Chapter 3. Ooops. Sorry!

And finally, while it was fun to keep most of you guessing, 'OBX' is nothing more than the location of the story. It's the three letter abbreviation for Outer Banks, NC, and I see it on stickers adorning 5 out of 10 cars where I live. I originally planned to name the story 'Outer Banks', but I referred to this as the 'OBX story' in my head for so long, it just stuck.


End file.
